Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Babybockbock]

He's cute! So you got 2 little girls out of that hatch. Yay!

Nope 2 boys and a girl, we are keeping the other boy. I have more Brabanter chicks on order for this spring.

 

[MarySue]

Nope 2 boys and a girl, we are keeping the other boy. I have more Brabanter chicks on order for this spring.

The odds always seem to flow in that direction. I guess you can be thankful for at least one of them being a pullet. I'm glad you're going to give it a try, hopefully none of your neighbors will say anything.

 

[Babybockbock]

The odds always seem to flow in that direction. I guess you can be thankful for at least one of them being a pullet. I'm glad you're going to give it a try, hopefully none of your neighbors will say anything.

Hes going to have a cozy man pad in our shed to muffle any early morning crowing. During the day they cant complain,Their dogs bark all the time.

 

[Duck Drover]

I used rubbery shelf liner in the bottom for the last chicks. Pulling it out and washing it off was easy. Chicks don't slip and nothing gets knocked in the water

That is what I do but I also put the shelf liner on grated plastic squares out of an old food dehydrator that I converted into a chick brooder and that makes it so easy to lift it out of the plastic tubs (two side by side per tub), plus spilled water for ducklings goes through and the ducklings stay dry that way. I use the shelf liner in the hatcher too, cut to fit over the wire grate.

 

[Duck Drover]

I switched to the Ecoglow with this last batch of chicks and I was very pleased with the results. Not only did it work nicer for the warmth but the lack of light allows the chicks to sleep more peacefully.

I got the large Ecoglow and it worked great when I used it. I took a break from hatching this year due to my ankle injury and surgeries but I want to do some winter hatching now that I am recovering and before duck season starts up again (we are still getting eggs but they get too cold on the ground so we don't hatch them this time of year, we just eat them). I like how it has an adjustable height so I slanted mine to give them a choice how close to get to it.

I also use Victor Ultimate Flea Traps as brooder warmers since they just use a nightlight and the dome makes a good hen surrogate. In the plastic tubs they put off plenty of heat and I vent the lids by covering more or less of the top in order to give them cooler areas if they get too warm under the heat. The ducklings go off heat fast, usually by two weeks old, since the tubs trap their body heat and they like to sleep in a pile but the chicks go off heat faster too since I keep the tubs inside a spare room at room temperature.

We can't keep anything we hatch now that our codes have changed so we won't be raising the babies anymore unless we keep them to sell as juveniles or we move. There are alot of people who only want pullets but I don't want to raise chicks if I can't select the nicest ones to keep so I would rather just sell the straight run and let the buyer decide what to sell and what to keep. I can vent sex ducklings before they are 2 weeks old and there are no bans on drakes so we have thought about just raising ducks and no chickens. We can keep hatchlings until they mature since they don't count until they are mature but there is no reason to do that now. Ducks mature at 4 months and chicks at about 6 months, based on age at egg laying.

I have some Easter Eggers we hatched that I kept for now to see how they look as adults and to make sure they lay a blue egg, not green. We put a Quechua rooster over hatchery Ameraucanas that are laying blue-green eggs in order to have more blue egg layers but we technically can't keep any for ourselves because we hatched them after the code change. Once they start laying they will have to go so the only way to keep our offspring is to move.

I have a beautiful multi-colored Easter Egger rooster from the first hatch that is not crowing yet but I saw him mount the hens after the Quechua rooster went to bed so I am hoping I can get some of his offspring before finding a home for him. I wish my neighbor could put him over their Easter Egger hens so I could hatch their fertile eggs but with the new rooster ban only the roosters here before the ban can stay under the grandfather clause and they did not have a rooster before the ban quietly went into effect. We would have to take him over for visits and keep him hidden somewhere, lol. At least I know I can make more like him but he was the only rooster in the bunch that I like, the rest went to the auction.

I love hatching so I could go back to buying fertile eggs to hatch and just selling chicks but too many times there were mix-ups with egg collection that resulted in me getting something I did not want (usually worthless crossbreeds instead of the heritage breeds I wanted to hatch) so we have our own flock in order to make sure we are hatching the highest quality of purebred birds. Our fertility is so much better than the hatching eggs I was buying too so I would really rather keep hatching our own if we could afford to move to a more rural area.

 

[Bgstoelb]

Anyone interested in an Icelandic rooster? I have two and only need one. He's a good rooster to the girls and isn't aggressive to people, just keeps a respectful distance.

Send me a message or email me at [email protected].

I live in the centralia-Olympia area.

 

[theceltichorse]

Shelf liner in the brooder? That sounds like a brilliant (and easy to clean!!!) idea. I am headed to the dollar store to get some for my incubator, I might just pick up enough for my tub as well. Certainly will alleviate a lot of mess in regards to shavings everywhere!

 

[junebuggena]

Shelf liner in the brooder? That sounds like a brilliant (and easy to clean!!!) idea. I am headed to the dollar store to get some for my incubator, I might just pick up enough for my tub as well. Certainly will alleviate a lot of mess in regards to shavings everywhere!

Not the paper stuff, the rubber grip stuff.

 

[theceltichorse]

Not the paper stuff, the rubber grip stuff.

Yes, that is what I am going to get.

 

[Duck Drover]

Hes going to have a cozy man pad in our shed to muffle any early morning crowing. During the day they cant complain,Their dogs bark all the time.

You would be surprised at how people who make far more noise will complain about rooster noise. It is about control for them. They want to tell others what they can or can't have but they don't care how they impact others.

We have a nasty neighbor whose dog barked and even howled and the dog crapped in our yard and peed on our bushes (causing brown spots where the urine kilked the leaves) but he complained about bird noise and bird poop. It takes 10 birds to make as much poop as one dog and even then it composts faster (we hose ours down to feed the worms) but people are so ignorant when it comes to birds.

A rooster can't even make enough decibels to be considered a nuisance (we have trains passing through day and night that we can hear loud and clear from miles away) but people who live in urban areas seem to be offended by nature noises for some reason. We have tried to appease our nasty neighbors but everything we do for their benefit gives them the idea that they can control everything we do by complaining. I never complained about them, even though I had many reasons to do so, because I want to live in peace without conflict. That makes them think they can bully me (even throw rocks at me) so I finally had to decide that enough is enough and refuse to give into any more of their bullying to keep it from getting worse.

We keep our roosters in the coop until late morning, longer than required, but we had to keep more roosters than we wanted to due to the rooster ban. We had 2 roosters that we would replace periodically as we kept their offspring and then went to 4 roosters before the ban took effect since they are the only roosters we can keep now.

Fewer roosters make less noise but we have to put up with more noise in order to be able to keep hatching for as long as possible before we lose the roosters we have grandfathered. We also had to keep more hens since we can't replace them as they get old and retire. We would have far fewer birds if the codes had not changed but we had to protect our property rights the only way we could. We were also told by code enforcement that we can't sell birds or eggs without a business license but that was a lie. Still, we kept birds we hatched that we had intended to sell due to that misinformation.

I have already been to court and won but we are still getting harrassed and threatened with more court cases (we won 9 already). I really wish we could afford to move but right now I have to get my daughter through high school before we can look into moving.