Chicken Food?

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Permalink Reply by Stacie Beute on February 19, 2010 at 7:45pm

Hi Micheal and Lylah,
I'm checking into stock and will get back to you asap.
Thank you!
Stacie

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Permalink Reply by Ericka Cero Wood on February 20, 2010 at 11:51am

Hey Stacie!
Glad that you have some takers for the roaches. We have chickens, but even though I am a bug person, these things creep me out too much to handle :) Plus I actually saw the aquarium filled with them!

Checked out your planting beds outside of CNUW, looking good! There is some interesting flowers coming up in them.

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Permalink Reply by Stacie Beute on February 20, 2010 at 6:58pm

Hi Erika!
We've not gotten far there. What you see is just the removal of the bushes primarily and whatever wildflower seed Natalie scattered through the years. After waiting and waiting, we never received the specialty seed we ordered. The company totally flaked. It's a real bummer because 1) the seed was really cool open-pollinated stuff that's so hard to find 2) because we had to contest the charge and got zero response for them. It was crazy.
We shall try again, but it's going to have to wait until I've got a few spare moments-- like March maybe. :)
Hope all is well there. How's the prop yard project going?

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Permalink Reply by Ericka Cero Wood on March 4, 2010 at 10:08am

What is the seed company name? Want to be sure not to use them myself! Ryan and I are looking to plant a few items in our garden that is on the tortoise list, one specifically is buckwheat. I am sure we will have some seeds to spare and will let you know when we get them. Buckwheat is a summer crop so planting time is this month (March) and early next. Our lettuce at home is starting to bolt and I wonder if the critters there at CNUW would like to eat some of that? Seems we always have more than we need. All organic. We also have chard which grows like gangbusters! I also emailed Natalie today about composting the critter bedding.

The Prop yard is still moving forward, just little details still needing to be worked out. Hope you are doing good and school is going well! Ericka

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Permalink Reply by Stacie Beute on February 20, 2010 at 6:53pm

Okay all, here's the scoop on our roach situation. Gratefully, Linda's chickens have wiped out the male population, but that means that we are down to females. We initially were reluctant to give out females because of the possibility that they could be pregnant. When they're young, the males and females are almost indistinguishable until the males sprout their horns. Problem is, they may be sexually mature before the horns let us know who's who. So, they would need to be eaten up pretty quickly, or kept in some enclosure in case they grow in numbers. I wouldn't want them to be outdoors and free. What if they ended up really liking AZ and all the sudden we've introduced a non-native....

That said, here's what Natalie (the exhibits curator) had to say,
"Linda cleaned out all the males, so I guess we could move to the adult females.
I don't have as many of them, maybe 100-200? But once they're gone, it
will be half a year before I have adult sizes again, so I would hesitate
to encourage many more people at this point. I would be happy to help people
set up their own colonies, or if you think there is enough interest, I could
raise them to sell as chicken treats."

Would anyone be interested in your own colony? Like she said, we can cull some, but it's getting to be slim pickin's.

Down the road, maybe Natalie could raise them and she could earn some $$ for the Center for Native and Urban Wildlife. Would that be of interest?

BTW, anyone who's interested in first hand experience with these guys can contact Linda at az1cowgirl@msn.com.

Thanks everyone!

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Permalink Reply by az1cowgirl on February 20, 2010 at 10:22pm

Hi, I'm Linda so I'll give you a quick overview of how our chickens took the cockroaches.

The more aggressive chickens just snatched it right up and had no problem with them. The others hesitated and gave the roaches a second look once they pecked at them and the roach hissed back. As Natalie said, maybe they weren't use to their food talking back the way the roaches do! I do not handle the roaches myself. What I do is use a pair of tongs to get them out of the enclosure we have them in, put them in a plastic shoe box sort of thing, and then take them out to the chickens where I dole them out one by one.

Now, seeing as these roaches are about to be eaten anyway, I hope this won't bother you but the larger cockroaches are sometimes and inch and a half to 2 inches long so I sometimes use a small shovel to "incapacitate" the roach so the chicken can get a hold on it and get them down. We give our birds one a day and after the first couple of days, they really got use to them and how to handle them.

Thank you to Natalie and Stacie as this has been a successful solution for everyone. If you do have any other questions, please feel free to email me at az1cowgirl@msn.com

Linda

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