Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Chickielady]

I candle the eggs and I can smell the bad ones before they ever explode. The worst that has happened is for chicks or ducklings to hatch in the incubator instead of the hatcher because I was not watching my due dates to move them in time. I have had to clean hatching mess but not exploded eggs.

I sniff every egg ! Good thing to do !

(Egg Huffer

, Huevo Huffer sounds better !!!!!!!!!!!!!

)

 

[Chickielady]

Is anyone on th e long beach peninsula and/or also have a bear problem? I built a second fence around my temporary run and a bear climbed it and ripped the roof off my coop a couple nights ago. Luckily I heard it and we scared it off with a little help from a shotgun. It came back later that night and ripped into the wire, but I had the girls on the garage!
I put up a motion light, two layers of hot wire, bolted down the roof, and lined the door with welded wire mesh. I put up the game cam hoping to catch a picture of the bear electrocuting himself but just got pictures of a deer, lol.
I'm going to go get a chain link kennel from my parents next week, but does anyone know of scent deterants that may work in the mean time? I go on duty for a couple days at a time and am worried about the kiddos!

Ya know, in all the time we have been here (and it is WILD here, we have never even seen a bear, rarely raccoon, only 1 or 2 sticker pigs even.
I have no idea why Long Beach gets so many bear, North bend is a bear hatchery , too.

 

[Chickielady]

Apology
After looking back at my posts, I can see that what I wrote came across much differently than I intended when I was teasing ChickieLady, and I want to apologize. I meant no disrespect! The written word can get fouled up much too easily and that's what happened here. And I feel really bad.

ChickieLady is a long time member of BYC, and has helped us all in countless ways, and I think that's obvious when you read her posts. I tried to poke some fun in a tongue-in-cheek fashion after she commented on Orpingtons. Well.... guess I'd better brush up on doing that sort of thing in a forum cuz it turned out all wrong! I know you love to kid around, but when something is written poorly and doesn't come across as a joke, well.... it just turns out bad.

I hope you will accept my apologies ChickieLady!

 

[Chickielady]

New to BYC from Seatac.

Tell us all about your birds !

 

[Chickielady]

I just read an article on adding Vitamin C or Vitamin E to the diet to help with heat stress in chicks. Vitamin C helped the most and E was between C and no supplementing BUT the article seemed to think that Vitain E helped more fighting off disease.

It may be the only reason why I have never had it happen, was that I add the vitamins (and Amprolium) to my chick's water, always. And I add the viatmins to all my birds' water in the winter & early spring when they are breeding to hatch.

 

[Chickielady]

Welcome!
Holy smokes! I've never had a bear problem with my coops! They like my blackberries out here but there aren't too many of them either.... The Twinkie idea sounds solid and disgusting! Lol

Edited- because my phone is dumb and I posted it before I was finished typing!

If I put Twinkies out, I'd get #1) ants and #2) crows & Blue Jays and #30 Einstein !!!!!!!!!!!! that man can smell a donut a mile away !!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and Einstein is my significant Other

 

[Chickielady]

The bear are like rats around here! He's usually after my trash or the berries, but I've had 2 different bear in my carport and the young one was around during the day twice last week. My concern is that he knows they are there now. My hope is that the shotgun blast scared the crap out of him. Lol.

You have dogs ? I'd get BIG DOGS if I were you !!! FAST !! Like yesterday !!!

 

[torrelee]

I have a chihuahua, but he doesn't even bark. Big dog is on the docket for when hubby moves up from California!
I see bear a couple times a week, coyotes occasionally, rabbits and deer almost daily! If they left my birds alone we would all be happy!

 

[Chickielady]

If I can talk hubby into spending the night, I might enter a few birds in the WFF show. Right now he doesn't want to. Maybe I can convince him that driving down Friday and Saturday is ok

IDK if we are doing the Winter Brisk this year, I am trying to retire !

So this Broody JG has 6 chicks, going on 1 mo old now, (those of you that were here at our party maybe remember this clutch of chicks) and the little buggers go right through the field fencing coop to coop & usually get their fannies pecked by other coop occupants.
Been going on 2 weeks now, and every so often as dusk falls a bugger is trapped for the night in a strange coop [crying its peeper head off !] & gets it's fanny pecked bad............we rescue & return it to the JG coop with big mama............... on & on, every night !

Well, suddenly one bugger is peeping & lost and obviously too fat to get through the 2x4 field fencing, and so I trapped it this afternoon, a little pullet, and her entire back of the head down the neck was ripped off from pecks !
Entire cranium & back of the neck gaping open !!!

So Einstein held the bugger whilst I stitched her up, and she took 6 stitches !!!!!!!!!!
Gooped her wound up with Bacitracin and.........
Then we hucked her in the JG coop with her mama & hopefully she stays there !

Just another day of drama at Spiritwood Farm !

 

[Chickielady]

I have a chihuahua, but he doesn't even bark. Big dog is on the docket for when hubby moves up from California!
I see bear a couple times a week, coyotes occasionally, rabbits and deer almost daily! If they left my birds alone we would all be happy!

Hubby in California ?
We still have 1 more load down there in storage (we were there as kids, I moved here, Gary & I reunited 15 years ago & I MADE HIM move back here, CANNOT stand Cali !!!, hopefully your DH & BIG DOG get back up here fast !!!