My husband and I moved a few years ago up to a modest place in the forest on a mountaintop in the Cascades in southwestern Washington State, near Mt. St. Helens. We always kinda wanted to have chickens and finally, we did it! Since then, we have added dairy goats, ducks and rabbits. Thinking about turkeys......
Our chickens are Buff Orpingtons, rhode island red hens, easter eggers and russian orloffs, and their offspring. The goats are quasi mini-nubians (they have a little pygmy thrown in), and the ducks are muscovy. We also have three cats and five dogs who own us. We are enjoying chickens alot more than we expected, but we have also been guided by the wonderful experts here at BYC, either in educating ourselves by reading posts of others, or by posting pertinent questions and getting immediate answers from experts. We have been very successful with our flock and I credit alot of what we did right with having read and read and read and read at BYC. I did not even know I had russian orloffs....it was a feed store mix up. I couldn't figure out what in the heck they were, but it was a snap for me to get the answers here.
I'm a L.A. city girl who has moved to WA state 15 years ago but didn't get that place in the country she wanted until she was middle aged and.....broke from the change in the economy. So I appreciate the frugal ideas and do it yourself advice presented here. My husband and I have been married 28 years. We have a grown daughter who gave us our first grandchild this last January, but she no longer lives at home. We have two sons at home still, an 18-year old entrepreneur son and a 14-year old middle schooler. My other interests are gardening, being self sufficient, making soap and Facebook.
My name is "savingdogs" because our family has been actively involved for the past dozen years in fostering humane society dogs (and some cats) and placing them into adoptive homes. As I update this bio, we are on fosters numbered 358, but we are currently on break from fostering until after the holidays. I also work for a veterinarian, but just as the kennel help as I'm nearly deaf from an inner ear disease. Our dogs are different breeds, border collie, golden retriever, rhodesian ridgeback and a rhodesian ridgeback mix and an independent karelian bear dog mix. Each of them and our three cats were once fosters but for one reason or another we kept them. Often when I post it will be on dog threads as I feel more experienced with them than with chickens, goats, ducks or rabbits. These are our first barnyard animals and we have lived with many, many different dogs so our perspective on dogs is experienced at least.
Thank you so much to all of you for being there, I appreciate all the advice so much!