Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

Gatewayto- There is a reason I named most of my boys stewie.

 

[Chickielady]

So here's photos for size comparison. They are tiny compared to any chicken.

You have an adorable helper !

 

[Chickielady]

Silkietown is coming along pretty well. Will be four 10x20 pens (half roofed) that open on a 20x20 courtyard.

I need to move houses and get the roofs done.

Thinking about leaving one pen open for the dogs. Put a big enough house in there.

They sure look like they want to help out!

 

[Chickielady]

Last year I was sooooo smug.......I overwhelmingly hatched and purchased straight-run chicks who ended up being pullets. I had to rehome a few cockerels and it was easy.

This year my husband has christened us RoosterRanch. It seems near everything we hatch out is a male. I have a hatch list for pullets and am keeping them waiting because it is boy-boy-boy around here. One more batch is in the incubator and my fingers are crossed.

Anyone else have years where it seems only one sex hatches? I was daydreaming of a time when you can tell from the egg what sex the chicks will be and only set a cockerel egg when one actually wants one....

Actually, this year we have hatched what seems like 75% male in the Bielefelders, and Sulmtalers, but the Silvers and Marans seem to be 50-50%.....guess it goes by the breed...

 

[Chickielady]

I am DONE hatching...so exhausted from all the incubators going & now all the chicks...............................NO MORE....til maybe fall, maybe not til next spring....whenever my memory resets itself and I forget the stress (is the temp too high in the middle of the night I have to go check!) and the babies all making a poopy mess......................and the DUST DUST DUST.and the vaccinations........... and the chicks fighting.................

the fanny-pecking-parties...............the crying escapees who somehow found a hole under the chick pen fence and now we have to run them down with a salmon net to catch the little buggers.................

And now, maybe we can go away for a day or 2 ??????????????

 

[Duck Drover]

So my surgery is now scheduled for the 26th. It will be 9 months after my injury and in all that time I have not given birth to anything! I have eggs everywhere that need hatching so it looks like I am going to have to sell some eggs this year. I have ducks on nests and my Silkies are on nests but we have not left eggs for the Orpingtons yet because I was afraid they could be too related to take a chance hatching brother to sister, even though most of the hens laying now are not sisters to our two roosters.

I hatched Barnevelders from someone else's flock a few years back and I was getting deformed chicks, some with their intestines outside their body. The owner did not admit that her rooster was related to a couple of her hens until I brought up the hatching issues. It is too heartbreaking to hatch birds that have to be killed when they are intact enough to make it out of the shell but not healthy enough to survive. Then there could have been ones with genetic defects that were not obvious from the outside.

With splash roosters over black,blue, and splash hens I will only have blue and splash chicks this year. I sold off most of the black chicks and many of the blue chicks last year but I did not always have groups of four or more to sell together so we raised more than we wanted plus I was told we needed a business license to sell birds from our hobby so I did not list them very often. The goal this year is to keep splash chicks but we don't really need more blues since the majority of our hens are blue. The majority of the pullets we have sold were blue so we still have black pullets that will only hatch out blue chicks and they are the least likely to be related to our splash roosters but with blue to blue breeding anything is likely. I will need to switch back to a blue rooster once we get our fill of splash chicks but for now we only have 3 splash pullets that I may have to separate once they are laying so we don't get dilute splashes.

I am not sure if I should go ahead and hatch now while there are so few hens that could be sisters to the roosters or if I should wait until we thin down the flock to eliminate the possibility completely. If we hatch the biggest eggs and eat the pullet eggs, that should be safe but I am not in a position to raise chicks when I will be having surgery on the 26th. I should be on my feet 3 weeks following surgery so we can start hatching once I for sure have it done (it has been delayed several times since my original March 15th date).

If there is a chance of genetic defects, I would rather deal with the consequences myself than to sell hatching eggs that could possibly be too related. It is hard enough dealing with people who don't already have successful hatches to know what they are doing so I am hesitant to throw another factor in the mix. I would prefer to have some test hatches of my own before I sell hatching eggs so I know fertility and hatchability is good but there are never any guarantees of success once the eggs leave my care.

Should I sell fertile eggs and leave it up to the individual if they want to take the risk or should I refridgerate the eggs and sell them at a far lower price for eating? I don't like selling eggs at all due to the risk of salmonella if they are not cooked properly but most people at least know the dangers of eating raw eggs these days. We feed birds year round and now is the time to recover some of our feed costs but I am not sure if it is worth it to sell eggs. I have learned the hard way that people can start untrue rumors and ignorant people will believe the lies because they get caught up in the emotional appeal of the liar. I think most people are good people but it only takes one or two bad apples to ruin the barrel.

 

[CGilbert]

You have an adorable helper !

Thank you! It's hard to believe how quick they grow sometimes. He loves the chickens as much as me, he's so funny.

 

[forklift]

So Im trying to integrate new chicks with my 3 2yr old girls and I think that letting my turkish go brodie and then raise chicks would be ok, or am I wrong?
If right, where to get some day old chicks in the Portland/Vancouver area?

 

[pennyJo1960]

So Im trying to integrate new chicks with my 3 2yr old girls and I think that letting my turkish go brodie and then raise chicks would be ok, or am I wrong?
If right, where to get some day old chicks in the Portland/Vancouver area?

glad you stopped by we have some members down there but not
super sure they have chicks right now? is there a breed you would be looking for?

 

[CGilbert]

So Im trying to integrate new chicks with my 3 2yr old girls and I think that letting my turkish go brodie and then raise chicks would be ok, or am I wrong? 
If right, where to get some day old chicks in the Portland/Vancouver area?

Forewarning, they don't understand why they can't hold them ALL DAY LONG.