Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

In the next couple days, I'm going to start integrating 2 new hens with 2 existing hens. Unfortunately, the forecast is for rain every day starting Sunday. We have a large fenced 'day use' area, and a covered predator proof run attached to the hen house. The 2 existing hens tend to stay in the run when its raining. I could put a tarp over part of the day use area. I know its important to have a lot of room during integration, so I don't want them all fighting over the covered run. Anyone have any tips on how to do this with this upcoming weather?

Have you already let them get to know each other a bit through fencing?

I don't have this issue since I mostly have silkies who really dont care. Had to move my last remaining layers into the more secure silkie pens because of a weasel. Just dropped the 5 of them in the least populated pen. They've spread out amd moved in with the groups they get along with best
 
Sounds like you're going to have lots of garlic to eat. What variety did you plant?

I dug around in my garlic bed and found the last two laggards. One had just broken ground, and I had to dig down an inch to find the other one was growing too. So all 60 cloves are growing!

I pulled up a curly parsley plant, got it cleaned and the leaves in the fridge. I might chop some with olive oil in my food processor and freeze chunks in an ice cube tray. That would be an easy way to preserve and use the parsley this winter.

I prepared a 3'x4' section of raised bed next to the garlic and used a small bit of it to plant some yellow onion and shallot seeds, about 20 seeds of each. This is an experiment to find out how well fall planting onion and shallot seeds will work out.

I weeded and prepped another small bed (not raised) and planted some poppy seeds that I saved from this year's flowers.

And I pulled out all the raggedy kale and collard plants (and all the weeds) from my smallest raised bed. I found a volunteer strawberry plant in the bed that I'm going to try to keep growing. Maybe it's a native strawberry, and it'll make a few berries next year. That would be cool.
We planted two hard neck varieties, Music and Norquay, and one softneck, Messidor. A 16' row of each.

Strawberries are basically weeds around here. You'll have a whole bed of them before you know it. Mine have gone crazy and are even growing prolifically outside the raised bed.
 
It sure is quite an annual grand experiment, with various factors. This nice weather came at just the right time to finally plant garlic and flower bulbs. Just got a seed catalog, and found out that the onions I have saved seed from this year is an F1 hybrid. Do you think I should just buy new seed? I know the chickens love chive seeds, so I could give them these seed heads for a treat.
I would buy new ones. I'm not sure hybrids reproduce.
 
@Smokerbill I remember you saying you've already planted potatoes. What size potato do you find works best? I can't plant mine now, the moles are invading my whole garden, and they eat the taters.
I really couldn't tell you which size works best since I've never planted potatoes in the fall before. And luckily I haven't had any critters in the soil damage any potatoes, so far anyway.

ETA: I planted both small and large whole potatoes, the best looking ones that had turned green or started sprouting. If fall planting works, fine, and if not, also fine. I don't eat many potatoes, but I like to have a few on hand if I'm craving some.
 
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We have switched the two roosters earlier than we planned to. Cooper has been jumping on the hens, NOT mating, and just acting dominant. Don't understand that at all. Now Ralphie is in with the hens and everyone seems to be adjusting. We had one hen hanging out in the coop all day for several weeks now, but she is out today, so that must have had something to do with Cooper too.

Poor Cooper doesn't understand what just happened, but Ralphie is one happy guy. And he has mated with some hens, but he's not going crazy, so I think we are past the crazy hormone stage. This might work out.

Don't have the heart to put Cooper down, especially since we wouldn't cook him. But time will tell. Not sure how it works out for a rooster to be on his own indefinitely, and I don't have enough hens to have 2 roosters in there. They would be fighting all the time.
 
Have you already let them get to know each other a bit through fencing?

I don't have this issue since I mostly have silkies who really dont care. Had to move my last remaining layers into the more secure silkie pens because of a weasel. Just dropped the 5 of them in the least populated pen. They've spread out amd moved in with the groups they get along with best
A few days so far of the see no touch thing. Looks like tomorrow will be mostly dry, so another good intro day. Our top hen Marge (of the 2 existing flock) is pretty much in their face, but the new wyandottes are already bigger than her, but they seem respectful. The second hen from our existing flock is pretty docile, so no concerns about her. No posturing, other than Marge trying to peck, which I assume is normal for establishing the social order of the flock.

Thankfully, we don’t have weasels around that I know of, just the usual cats, coyote, raccoons, owls, hawks, and eagles.
 

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