Hi, everyone -- I have been reading BYC for a few years and decided to join finally. (I'm in SE Portland)
We have Silver Laced Wyandottes, 2 hens and 4 chicks currently. We just re-homed two Jersey Giants out to Gehren's Feed in Sandy because we think they bullied one of our SLW's to death last weekend.
We started with 5 SLW chicks a couple of years ago, four of them were roosters and we didn't want our remaining hen to be alone, but couldn't find any SLW's, so we ended up with 3 Jersey Giants, and one of them was a rooster... Last fall, we raised two more SLW's from chicks, bringing us to five total until last Saturday when we found one of the younger SLW's under a tree dead, with no apparent injuries, but those JG's could get really vicious with their pecking, and we think one of them could have popped her on the head. We know it's also possible she just died, but we didn't want to take any chances.
The chickens are out in the back yard during the day, it's fenced and so far we haven't lost any to predators. We are careful to lock them in the coop at night because we do have Raccoons and Possums in the city. I feel really lucky when I read about chicken keepers in the southern states especially and am glad we don't have to worry about snakes, weasels, foxes, etc. too!
