Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Saris]

I'm not able to buy my chicks until the end of May. Do most feed stores continue to sell them that late?

Often some will get chicks in that late, if not check craigslist or other local breeders. Are you looking for specific varieties?

 

[chickenmomma16]

Gulp. A bobcat was on our property today!

I've never seen one before...until today! It scared me so bad! Our chickens free range!! It was staring at my son and my daughter. Beautiful animal but YIKES!!

Be so careful with bobcats! I just had a female bobcat take 9 of my hens a couple months ago. Climbed a 6ft fence at 6:30pm. I walked in on her as she was piling them up saving them for later. She will never be back but the damage was done. I keep a much closer eye on my chickens and they spend more time locked in their run but even though they complain it is for their own good. We also have coyotes that will take chickens if they are out and unattended.

A friend of mine just had 3 chickens beheaded by a suspected weasel. Keep a close eye on your birds... the predators are out and hungry this time of year!

 

[Hinotori]

My chicks are a month old. I just have a heat lamp over them, a 60 W bulb. I have it on 24 seven right now. In the house. My coupe does not have electricity. I think they are about half feathered out. It's still getting into the 30s at night and often raining. 50s and 60s during the day, and often raining when can I move them outside to a coop? All the threads I find on this topic seem to deal with coops with electricity. Their temporary coop, until I get the new one built and integrate them all at the same time, will be a pen with a dog crate.

Start taking them out for a few hours in the daytime when it's warmer to help get them acclimated. Slowly increase the amount of time out. You'll need to watch them to see if they are cold at first. Them getting used to the temps is the big thing.

I've had hens raise chicks quite happily in freezing weather. One even had few day old chicks during that 8 degree cold snap a couple years ago. Didn't lose any to cold. I made sure she had lots of bedding and a light to bring temps up to about 20 in her house. Food was in close reach and I changed water every few hours. She still took them outside in the cold. They'd dash out for a few moments then back under. By the time our temps came back up to the 20s I took the light out. They were happy scratching with her in those temps. Then back under into her heat.

 

[Hinotori]

Gulp. A bobcat was on our property today!

I've never seen one before...until today! It scared me so bad! Our chickens free range!! It was staring at my son and my daughter. Beautiful animal but YIKES!!

Be so careful with bobcats! I just had a female bobcat take 9 of my hens a couple months ago. Climbed a 6ft fence at 6:30pm. I walked in on her as she was piling them up saving them for later. She will never be back but the damage was done. I keep a much closer eye on my chickens and they spend more time locked in their run but even though they complain it is for their own good. We also have coyotes that will take chickens if they are out and unattended.

A friend of mine just had 3 chickens beheaded by a suspected weasel. Keep a close eye on your birds... the predators are out and hungry this time of year!

Stupid weasel got two of my silkies a couple months ago. This was my second time dealing with those pests. Had mad silkies because I fully closed them in at night and didn't let them out in predawn like they prefer.

Hawks haven't been an issue since I started tossing extra eggs out in the weeds. The local ravens that nested down the road have found the spot and check for fresh offerings. They chase off the hawks. I'll have to keep any chicks locked up behind tight fencing, but less issues of adult birds getting taken is nice.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Yep...that's exactly what we were thinking. No way kitty kitty!

no matter how precious are birds are just be safe of the people

 

[elizmartin]

Hello Folks, Looking for a ride for 2-3 pullets from Battle Ground, Wa. to the Monroe Poultry show this coming Saturday…Anyone able and willing and having room….These are from BGMatt here on BYC. Thanks !
Appreciate, eliz

 

[pennyJo1960]

Forced to surrender? Now I'm confused.

My left ACL went in the shepard ring, had a minor stroke then graves disease took most of my vision
and they found my spinal column is closing in my neck. the little bees in my feet
are neuropathy caused by years of chemicals... and the list goes on..
I do not slow down or give in.......and will not wine or bore with more....

 

[pennyJo1960]

Sunday is lock down day for the incubator.......after two outages already this batch, I just want to

Good luck hoping, praying all is well

 

[CarolynF]

Hello Folks, Looking for a ride for 2-3 pullets from Battle Ground, Wa. to the Monroe Poultry show this coming Saturday…Anyone able and willing and having room….These are from BGMatt here on BYC. Thanks !
Appreciate, eliz

I'll be there on Sat. and I may be able to help for part of the route. Matt is farther south than I am, but if you're piecing together a "train" and need more help let me know. So he's not showing this time?

 

[UrbanEnthusiast]

Hello, everyone! Some of you may remember me from a few years back. I was trying to raise a small flock of 7 hens in Seattle with an inadequate coop I got stuck with. Anyway, then some life shinola happened in October 2012, and I had to give up my flock to a very nice lady I met in this thread. Can't remember her name or handle, but she runs Collier Clocks Farm.

So for over three years I have been pining away for more chickens! It seemed impossible to make it happen whilst living the city life. So my husband and I developed at-home careers and moved to the south tip of Camano Island in July 2014 to build a homestead and eventually a sailboat. We had to start from scratch, renting land with no amenities. We put in electricity, cleared brush and dug drainage for our home site, bought a storage shed to live in, and got to work setting up our rainwater catchment system, which still isn't quite finished. It's been a harrowing process without a water source! But I currently have several hundred gallons of water saved up all brought in by hand, and catchment should be done in a couple of months. We're almost finished with our yurt bedroom too. Our kitchen is in a giant army tent we had shipped from North Carolina. You can see pictures of everything here on our "Frog Gully Farm" Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/froggullyfarm/

Of course, building our own house and plumbing has been a higher priority than building a coop, so chickens had been on the back burner. Then a miracle happened! My mother-in-law called me a few days ago and said someone in her neighborhood was giving away a small coop. We rushed down from the island to pick it up, and it's very sturdy and secure! It's only barely big enough for 4 to 6 small hens, but we have plans to expand it and build a run, so I went to the feed store and bought 8 chicks on Friday!!! Sadly, on-site landlady does not want a rooster, so I hope they can survive in a wooded, free-range setting without male protection. We don't have a fence, and coyotes come through all the time, even during the day. We have tons of bald eagles too. I know there will be occasional losses. I just hope it's not so frequent that I feel like the whole operation is unsustainable. I picked lightweight breeds known for their alertness and flying ability: 4 brown Leghorn, 2 Ancona, and 2 EE.

I am actually recovering from a very drastic breast reduction I had 3 weeks ago (still healing but my back feels much better now!), and my husband had all 4 wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, plus he's going out of town for 11 days later this month. Raising the chicks just seemed like too much hassle right now, so a friend of mine with two young daughters offered to raise them up for us for the first month, yay! Less work for us, Easter treat for them!

So we drove out to Monroe Farm and Feed first thing Friday morning when the chick shipment arrived, then brought the babies back to my in-laws' house in Seattle for several hours while we finished building the brooder and waited for my friends' girls to come home from school so we could all have a nice time transferring the chicks to their new environment and watching the girls totally squee the heck out, which they did!

During that waiting period, one of the chicks started aggressively pecking everyone's eyes. Even when the other 7 were trying to sleep, it was going around pecking eyes, one by one. I tried isolating it for about an hour to no avail. That only ticked it off more! Had I been raising them myself, I would have given the situation a day or two to see if things calmed down. But I knew my friends didn't want to deal with trying to rehabilitate an extremely aggressive chick (my husband has raised chicks several times and never seen anything like it), and I knew there'd be no way to cull her once the girls got attached if the eye pecking didn't stop. So I made the decision, swallowed my fear, and cut off the poor thing's head. It sucked really hard, but I think it was the right decision. It was certainly disappointing because that chick had so much spirit. It was the only one who was already scratching through the bedding looking for food.

So out of my 4 brown Leghorns and 2 EEs, the mean one was the only one who looked different from the other 5. Her back stripes were a little lighter than the others, and her cheeks were a bit puffier. I'm guessing she was probably one of the two EEs.

On our way to transport the chicks to our friends' house in Ballard from my in-laws' on Capitol Hill, we stopped at Portage Bay Grange and picked up a replacement chick, a blue Hamburg from Baxter Barn, which is where I should have gone in the first place. I had forgotten about that guy out in Fall City. I had bought a pullet from him once before. He's not much of a people person, but his farm is really cool. Oh, well. I know where to go next time I need chicks. Hopefully these lowly feed store birds will be healthy, hardy, wary, and good layers. And I'm super happy with my blue Hamburg from Baxter Barn!

Anyway, I'm sad I don't get to be around my chicks much for the first month, but my friends' girls are having a BLAST with them, and I get to visit occasionally. I'm in Seattle a lot because I miss my friends down there. Camano is a conservative retirement community, and we're nudist stoner hippies in our early 30s, LOL. But living in the gorgeous woods near secluded beaches is well worth it, especially now that I have chickens at last! We have five acres we share with our landlady across the creek. It's total privacy. We even get to compost our own poop in our DIY outhouse!

Basically, life is MUCH better than when I was posting here back in 2012. We have worked hard to make our dreams come true. Chickens are just icing on the cake!