Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Hinotori]

I'm thinking of making little outfits and dressing Ashes up for pictures. Even the dogs don't cooperate as well as he does. I just wish some of the big girls would sit still.

 

[Hinotori]

Got to love how the girls will just help themselves.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Lot's do make the photo's with props of some nature
ot like th girls going after treat bag is pretty cute

 

[Duck Drover]

I have to relocate a batch of young cockerels and sadly they are pretty worthless so they will probably go to the auction. They are not going to be very meaty birds since they are Easter Eggers and they don't have any value for breeding. Only one is striking enough to keep alive while the rest are pretty ordinary (although they are handsome). I am not sure they are even worth the hassle of listing them on Craigslist when there is already a surplus of roosters. I will probably send them to the auction just to be able to reduce the feed cost and make space in the coop without the hassle of dealing with Craigslist flakes. It is my least favorite part about raising chickens but it is a fact of life. I just need to be certain they are cockerels so I don't throw away a pullet by mistake.

One of the Silkie roosters I gave away managed to get a blue ribbon and he was best of variety at the fair but most roosters are not so lucky. I try to find flocks for my boys when I can but these guys only have value to someone who wants to breed Easter Eggers. They are half Quechua and half hatchery Easter Eggers (not as mutt as backyard Easter Eggers) so they should have strong blue egg genetics but they are still crossbred so not very desirable when they don't produce the eggs themselves.

I could throw the boys in a tractor coop and try to fatten them up before they start to crow so I can butcher them myself but we are not set up for that. Is there anyone looking for a healthy supply of meat to grow out a bit longer? How about someone who would want to process them all and take half if I keep feeding them a bit longer? When we lived on acreage we ate all our roosters but having backyard birds makes it harder to butcher with nosy neighbors peering in our yard all the time. I used to raise silver foxes so they cleaned up the parts we do not eat but our cat is too pampered and I don't need her to know that our birds are edible.

 

[pennyJo1960]

I am over done at this point took on 11 straight run as favor
but have not been able to place all have my own three I hatched
but have 12 about to hatch

 

[Hinotori]

And the worst part is that boys seem to eat twice as much as the girls.

I've got boys 5 on the wait list to eat and still need to pick at least one more. Just waiting to be sure of their looks first. I'll be keeping 4 out of the 11. My blind rooster Pumpkin, Ashes the white one, and two of the younger boys. Maybe on one of the older roosters.

I need to get rid of a few girls as well. One of the two pullets and a few of the girls from last year. They have bad wings and were kept for eggs and body heat.

 

[junebuggena]

Went whale watching from the river bank today.

 

[Manningjw]

Hello everyone! The other day I dug up very large larvae from my potato bed. I was about to ask what they were here but a quick google search yielded "Curl Grubs" as the answer - never heard of them before but I suspect they are what have been eating my potatoes. They are ugly little things, the chickens loved them though!



A second pullet started laying eggs - time to re-home some more of the adults I think! More shocking to me is the first 5 eggs from my young birds have all been in the nests. If anyone wants a broody barred Ameraucana(project bird obviously not APA) let me know :-D.

 

[pennyJo1960]

My actual egg count has dropped so low I beginning to think it is blue being to hard on them?

 

[Manningjw]

My actual egg count has dropped so low I beginning to think it is blue being to hard on them?

Blue as in the diluting gene or blue as in the shell color? Or is Blue the name of your rooster?