Hey there from the Key Peninsula in Washington

I'm Steph and I just finally decided to join BYC after looking so many things up on this site throughout this last year. I am so thankful for so much info available in one place and that most everyone seems friendly and supportive.

We bought our 1st house out here on 5 acres almost a year ago and the first thing we did was buy chicks and build a coop. We were both raised in the city and are having a blast out here on our Homestead!

We started with 6 chicks 1 buff orp, 3 RIR, and 2 EEs. They were all great but we lost one EE, she was found dead in the coop and had been partially eaten by the others. RIP Bella. The remaining 5 all started laying within about 7-8 day period right around 20 weeks. I was pretty impressed by how they all started so close together.

One of our RIR was killed by a bald eagle. RIP Cinnamon. So we were down to 4 (Buffy, Fuzzy, Paprika, and Tiny). We decided to get more chicks in March: 1RIR-Honey, 1Gold. Sex link-Mystery, 1BR-Curiosity aka blind Shelly, 1-Cuckoo Maran-Dr. Pepper (our Roo), 1-SS-Speedy, 1-Black sex link-Cookie, and 2EEs-Buttercup and Brownie.

We recently had attacks 3 days in a row so have finally decided to make a run. Previously they were in a very large fenced treed enclosure with no cover on top. We are going to make 4-5 600sqft runs that we can rotate them between.

Dr. Pepper saved one of our young EEs from another bald eagle and luckily my brother saved him from the eagle too. Unfortunately, he had a couple bald spots above and below his tail feathers and some of the girls were pecking at him and making it worse. So he is separated and lonely for a while.

While I was very excited about getting the baby chicks to start with, I thoroughly enjoy caring for these funny and cute creatures. It's very relaxing watching them. We currently have 9-10 laying out of 11. Not too shabby! With 9 eggs being our top laying day! We are considering getting some meat birds and we've just purchased some wood for a new coop. I had a blast building the first one with my husband James, so l look forward to this one as well.

That's my story. Thanks for reading it

 

Thanks for the welcome and info. Will have to talk to my husband about the hardware cloth as we've added chicken wire to the existing cattle fencing(I'm not sure what it's called). I sure wouldn't like to lose any more! My dog is a good help against predators though. So hopefully that will do until we can afford the upgrade.

 

Thanks!

 

Thank you