mine (pekin) do okay outside foraging. sometimes i look out and can't quite see them, but it always turns out they are up against the house. i still provide duck mash but let them have crickets and other bugs since the beginning. i have never had a problem of them not coming home. my place is pretty small, though, 1/4 acre. they walk around the hens, goats and so forth. even the cat and dogs dont' bother them. i think most animals come home at night to sleep to where ever it is there fed during the day. my hens sleep in the tree at night (which scared the bejeesus out of me at first that they would just fly away) but always fly down in the morning for breakfast. i was thinking the way i stopped watching my pekins as much was less by exact age and by how their feathers were more developed and they seemed like they could give the dog or whatever a good peck on the nose if disturbed.

Ask the Desert Botanic Garden, and the U of A's agricultural extension service. They would have seed recommendations. You have to fence it to keep range cows out ... there might not be a grazing lease active, but if you have grass in the fences area and none in the unfenced, something is eating the grass. For fast runoff control, get those "snakes" filled with straw and place them across the runoff areas at intervals, at right angles to the flow of the water. Plant a strip just above and below the strips to get a stripe of grass going to slow the water down when the snake eventually decays. Gabions in the deeper eroded areas will slow down the water, as will brush dams. Start in the smaller erosion channels at the high points and stake bunches of brush down with forked branches (like making a beaver dam). Work your way down the channels. Multiple small dams are better than one big one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabion ************ Searching Google for Arizona Native Grasses: http://www.nativegrasses.com/info/ornamental/southwest.html http://www.lgyp.com/brochure.asp?c=294897

We get hay from our field for the horses n cows and rabbits when I have some. Rabbits can live on good timothy hay. you dont need pellets. We also get food from the food pantries. At the local pantry here they have truck fulls of breads.Its amazing how much food big stores like wegmans throws out. Most of it is organic stuff. I think it dont sell fast as the price for that type of bread is $5 for a tiny loaf. And convienent enough we can store it in a cold part of the barn in the winter and it dont rot. all the animals eat it. even the horses get some as a treat. We get the types that are whole grains like the 12 grain or sunflower honey. Different pantries get foods from different stores. Find a pantry that recieve their food from a store that sells lots of organic stuff. We get other food from them too. Just tell them its for your animals. I bring extra eggs and squash to donate. I save our apples in wooden crates in a cool barn and they last till about january as long as you dont let them freeze completely. and even if they do they eat em like apple sauce. We also feed the animals lots of winter squash and pumpkins. almost all the animals eat it. We dont even need to take care of the garden they grow on. they just regrow there every year on their own as long as you leave a few to seed. I use a machety knife to chop em up and add them to the chickens feed and some horses like em too. Cows love em. Sometimes I'll cook up some in our wood burner for a warm treat in really cold weather. Your animals may need to get used to eating this type of food if they are used to grains. The chickens hatched here love this food. chickens that came from another farm take a few weeks to learn to like it but befor too long I see preferences among them. One beautiful black pencil rooter loves tomatoes. he will devour all the tomatoes befor touching anything else. Some of the chickens wont even touch the tomatoes. I noticed they really love spaggetti squash the best and I plan on growing a ton for them this summer. We also grow a patch of heirloom cattle corn. It fairs well some years. We store that in old animal cages and a small corn crib we made from old fencing. I noticed mice seem to get at it that way. Wish I had a better way to store it away from mice. another favorite is sunflowers. They grow in abundance. You place the heads face down in the sun on a piece of cloth up off the ground and as the backs dry the seeds fall right out. We also just scatter the seeds and they regrow with no effort the next year. Dont forget to leave some out for wild animals like turkey and other winter birds. Dont forget about natural forage too. Here, in New York, we have wild burdock which has lots of seeds and sumack. I realized that after watching the wild turkey foraging in deep snow. The sumack is tall and the berries are at the top. Its amazing how nature provides. The snow gets 4-5 foot deep and the turkeys can reach the berries. same with the burdock. the plants can get 3 foot high. We grow a patch of comfree too. the leaves are huge. you can dry them and store them for winter vitamins for all the animals. Rabbits especially. If they get disintary one portion will heal em quick. I also had some geese they were eating too much for winter. Then I realized they like to eat the grass around the nieghboring creek. They moved there and I havent fed them in 5 years!! The grass along the creek bed stays green and edible all winter. Get some books out of your local library and read about how they did it 300+ years ago. And its amazing what our livestock lived on. Squash and pumpkins was a major food for them. When people restuffed their beds with grass they fed the old grass to their animals...weird Hope this wasnt too long. Merry christmas! Marie

Hello to you all My kids and I had to live on top of a hill surrounded by 100 or so acres (that belonged to my late ex husband's grandmother). We had no home, no money,nothing to our name except a car that eventually got taken back. We had a tent and an old run down camper that had been up there since my husband was a kid. Our kids stayed in that and we in the tent. Most of what we eat for that year came from what I could find in those woods that were edible. We did get foodstamps but when you dont have a fridge there aint much that you can keep for long when it is a hundred degrees out. We cooked on an open fire using my cast iron pans that my parents gave me when I first married. Alot of what I knew about living off the land came from what I had learned as a kid from my family and from reading. I am far from being a city girl and my anxieties make living where I am now hard especially being a single mom. My kids loved living up on that hillside. No electricity, no video games, just nature. My son was healther than he'd ever been. I finally broke down and using only a hand saw began cutting trees down to debark and build a cabin. It took me 6 mo. to do this with little help from my mother-in-law and husband. We lived a total of a year this way. Though my marriage wasnt great and he spent no time with our kids. My kids and I we happy. I homeschooled both of them during this time and they learned more then than what they are now in public school. I had a controlling husband who was controlled by his mother. My kids and I went through more mental and verbal abuse than any kid should. I finally got the courage up to divorce him when my 9 yr look at me and said, "mommy its time. Its not right how daddy treats us or you." By this time we had just bought a 60 acre farm and I found courage from my kids to tell him I wanted a divorce. I almost lost everything. When it was all said and done We had lost the farm for he wouldnt give me time to find a job ( stay at home mom for ten yrs). Our 9 yr old daughter lost her 2 horses, 6 dogs, and 4 cats. She took care of them her self. up 6 am feed them 1st then herself and would go out and spend time with all of them (rain, snow, sun, 12degree to 100 degree weather didnt matter.) I know what it is like to want to go back to that time on the hill. But we dont have the land nor the money. We still go through the woods with permission. We collect seeds to continue the growth of the wild and If there is plenty we will dig a plant or two up and replant them by the house. Most of my garden has come from the woods near by and the rd side. We still go out to find edible but we watch what we take and we try to give back to keep it going. So rembrance consider collecting a few of the plants (provided there is plenty and not endagered. with permission) put them in pots and grow your own. (easiest done with perenial plants) Collect seeds and start your own. Just a suggestion from three who enjoys being in nature and live the way we feel we were supose to. I am just glade to have my kids. The judge listened to what they had to say. As for the colledge degree, I dont even have a high school diploma. Though after my divorce I have been trying. One day My anxieties, panic attacks,and partial siezures will not controll me.