Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[mikeyb]

Quote: X2. That thing is kick arse.
Thanks. Steve supposedly has an art dealer that is interested and talking somewhere around $100,000. YES they are saying One Hundred Thousand. Sounds nice but I will believe it when I see CIFF (Cash In Fat Fist)
Keep the faith, but don't spend it to ya get it is my motto.
Great looking piece of art for sure. Kudos my friend!

 

[TurtlePowerTrav]

OK so I am really having a hard time keeping up. Partially because we are going so fast and partly because I have been pretty busy. Besides the normal things at home, trying to get items made for 3 big upcoming events and trying to get a big coop (well kind of 4 coops) expansion going and done.
Here is a bit of what is keeping me busy.
This is the dragon I have helped my friend make. There are some thing over 5000 scales on it. I cut out about 90% of those free hand with his plasma cutter. I also made the spine and wings



I designed and build most of the head.


Here is Steve for perspective.



And more recently. I was asked to make something that looks similar to this for a wall hanging. For $300 (

) it is only about 6' long. It will be on the walls of a law firm in Oregon by next week.

DANG, I needs me a dragon(could never afford one though)

 

[lilfarmmomma]

I especially like Plan B!!!
But in the mean time, I think it's your personality that will lead you to the answer. I am notorious for changing my mind over time, analyzing then re-analyzing trying to find the BEST. For me it would therefore be best to try 2 breeds, then go to several shows and read lots of BYC threads, then add another couple breeds. Repeat 'till happy!

When I rush I'm always sorry.

And, read actual human reviews, or ask around. I read the "breed characteristics" and there are a couple that if I could go back and start over, I would have gotten something different. I also went for lots of variety, because I wanted my coop to be colorful and with different personalities, yet I wanted good layers. I didn't ask or read real reviews until AFTER I bought most of my flock. The next batch that I get will be good layers, but I will be going off of what I have read from people on BYC about personality both with me and the other chicklets. I have a couple that just seem to be bullies. If it works itself out as they grow, then great. If it doesn't, then they will have to go. Bullies have no place in my home.

 

[sarahkatie]

OK so I am really having a hard time keeping up. Partially because we are going so fast and partly because I have been pretty busy. Besides the normal things at home, trying to get items made for 3 big upcoming events and trying to get a big coop (well kind of 4 coops) expansion going and done. Here is a bit of what is keeping me busy. This is the dragon I have helped my friend make. There are some thing over 5000 scales on it. I cut out about 90% of those free hand with his plasma cutter. I also made the spine and wings I designed and build most of the head. Here is Steve for perspective. And more recently. I was asked to make something that looks similar to this for a wall hanging. For $300 (

) it is only about 6' long. It will be on the walls of a law firm in Oregon by next week.

X100 wow.... That's beautiful cr

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote: X2. That thing is kick arse.
Thanks. Steve supposedly has an art dealer that is interested and talking somewhere around $100,000. YES they are saying One Hundred Thousand. Sounds nice but I will believe it when I see CIFF (Cash In Fat Fist)
Keep the faith, but don't spend it to ya get it is my motto.
Great looking piece of art for sure. Kudos my friend!
Yup and like I said I will believe it when I see it. I have a CD of many more pics. See we had a photographer take pics and then he photo shopped some. Made the dragon different colors and added scenery to it. Very nice pics that we hope should help to sell it. IF anybody would like to look at the pics just to see how cool he made it look. send me pm.

 

[LaughingFeather]

Yup and like I said I will believe it when I see it. I have a CD of many more pics. See we had a photographer take pics and then he photo shopped some. Made the dragon different colors and added scenery to it. Very nice pics that we hope should help to sell it. IF anybody would like to look at the pics just to see how cool he made it look. send me pm.

A beautiful piece of art. Impressive. I wish my hubby would get into doing stuff like that. He was a finish Union IronWorker and I keep telling him he needs to do art. Maybe you can talk him into it someday. He needs another hobby.

 

[TacomaFarms]

This feisty girl won't stop peeping crazy loud! Finally took her out to hold and she is all relaxed...any more relaxed and shed be dead!

So adorable! I have a squeeker too. It climbs on top of all the other birds in the chick pile. lol...

Quote: X2. That thing is kick arse.
Thanks. Steve supposedly has an art dealer that is interested and talking somewhere around $100,000. YES they are saying One Hundred Thousand. Sounds nice but I will believe it when I see CIFF (Cash In Fat Fist)
X3 all of the above! That is awesome CR! $100,000!!!

You know if you put something like that in your chicken coop nothing would ever bother them, and they'd have lots of places to roost!

 

[Flaming Chicken]

thank you very much for taking this and posting it so others can see

And here are pictures of the runs that VF helped us with on last years tour.


this is on the big run. We kept the base boards up off the ground on concrete feet, because the old run was sitting in the mud and the wood rotted. I filled in the gap with rocks but the chickens scratched all the rock out from under them so now it is mostly just the hardware cloth apron with paving stones and spikes keeping it in place. We also re used much of the hardware cloth from my old run. The old run was chicken wire reinforced with the hardware cloth after the raccoons tore their way in and killed half of my chickens.



The whole thing is covered with metal and transparent roofing alternated to add light and weather protection. Hardware cloth at the base and 2x 4 welded wire on the long walls.



This is the smaller of the runs with my Cream legbars. Same idea with the hardware cloth and welded wire combo. The grass has grown through a lot of the hardware cloth at the base so you cant see it as well. I have thought about bringing the hardware cloth up higher on this run but haven't so far.


We have had Cougars and raccoons in the old chicken wire run. We have had Bobcats and coyotes visit. A bear ripped hardware cloth off of a chicken tractor before just flipping the whole thing over. So we keep our chicken feed locked up in the buildings at night, never leave a live bird or food in anything that a bear can move at night. Use chicken tractors only for daytime entertainment and keep our fingers crossed that we have done all that we can to keep our chickens safe.

Now we need a 3rd coop and run for these!


My Breda fowl. I have 4 adults. 12 eggs in the bator and hopefully splitting a shipment of chicks from a rare breed auction.

 

[Flaming Chicken]

Have you long time poultry people found your breed and variety tastes have changed with time? I really want to focus on a handful of breeds but I'm not sure if I should use my old memories on what I want to raise or if I should go through the selection process again, try a couple breeds here and there for a year or two and see what sticks? I know two things for sure, one of those breeds will be Langshans (seeing some old photos of my Langshans is what really has made me decide i wanted chickens again) and everything will be large fowl.

Just general discussion and this seemed like a good place for it.

I probably got started the way most people do. My neighbors had a cute coop with cute chickens and my toddler and I would walk down the road every day a feed them grapes. My DH decided to convert our horse run into a coop and we brought 8 chicks home. Late summer arrived with eggs!!! The next year after a few chickens got eaten by coyotes we shopped for replacements,

That's when it started to get complicated. Our feed store was getting Dominique chicks. My neighbor was pretty excited about them. I looked up Dominique's on the internet and words like rare, endangered and heritage jumped out at me. When they finally came in I got a few. Honestly, I was never really able to tell them apart from the Barred Rocks but we knew that we had unusual chickens. Over the last few years, I have stopped going to the feed stores to buy my chicks but have been taking day trips to find "Project breeds" and now sending away for hatching eggs for breeds that "Nobody" has.

Last summer I had at least 40 chickens. Many of them were mutt crosses that were given to me and I was overwhelmed with eggs, that I really was tired of trying to sell. I have made a conscious decision to have 2 (and only 2) rare breeds at a time. Right now they are the Cream Legbar and Breda Fowl, and to phase out the other more common breeds in my layer flock. I will probably end up with over 40 chickens again but at least they will be the ones that I have chosen to have. I just hope my neighbor doesn't mind crowing roosters. LOL.

 

[pbjls]

what a diverse and talented group! The metal work is just stunning. STUNING. The gardening and coup work is tremendous. The site moves so fast that I just can't comment on all of it, but I lurk quite a bit and am truley impressed by the projects here as well as the willingness to help others out with questions or just offer support.

I have gotten some very positive feed back from the people at the show who tried our layer mash. thanks so much for that.

for those who are timmid about asking for nipples at the store, I have quite a few. I often sell bucket waterers to people getting feed at the farm.

I can place an order this week for meat chicks if anyone wants some let me know. We will have a processing class here in snohomish in about 10 weeks. If you don't want to do meat birds but have culls or even just want to learn that is ok as well.

lastly, I have an april 20th butcher date for gmo free pastured hogs and there are still 3 halves not spoken for. If interested in feed, nipples(for chickens only), pork, or the poultry processing please im me.

paul