Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[CarolynF]

Would it be possible for you to share a couple photos of your pens? I'd also love some input in regards to what I need to do to make it work for chickens.

Obviously more perches and nest boxes. I'll take out the pond and dog house (anyone want a nice dog house that needs a new roof? do I keep it for silkies to cuddle in?) I'd assume roofing the run in that clear plastic would probably be useful. Should I be building an actual coop or just the particular things they'd need? I assume chickens would probably like some protection from the elements.

You can click My Coop and see what I have for a coop -- very simple. I love your enclosed pen, and I agree with others that you should keep the dog house. Depending on it's size and the number of chickens you want, you may be able to convert it to a coop. Just figure about 3 sq ft per bird inside the coop. If it's too small for your flock it would make a great isolation coop or any number of other uses.

I really like having my coop about 3' off the ground to make it super easy to clean and allow the girls to use the space below it. Any closer to the ground makes it pretty tough to get underneath to clean, catch birds, etc. Having it up off the ground is also a good way to avoid rodents nesting under it.

First Egg!! Hooray!
Here's my beautiful 23 week old Barred Rock, Roxanne and her first egg! I knew she was ready and just waiting for the temperature to get back above freezing. She sang an egg song for hours today and I was worried that she was having trouble, but the egg is perfect and so is she. I'm a happy chicken mama!

Congratulations, that's something that never gets old.

Hello from Friday Harbor! Had no idea there would be so many Washingtonians here!
Tara

Welcome! Don't be shy... jump right in!

 

[CarolynF]

Quote:
If you're interested in RIR be sure to get Heritage RIR, they are quite different in personality than the hatchery/feed store version that most people have. Another bird to consider is the Black Australorp, they're excellent layers as well as dual purpose. Again, a well bred line rather than the hatchery/feed store blood lines.

You mention Marans as being slow to develop, you might want to dig deeper to see if one variety (color) might be faster than others. I recently heard that one seemed to be quite a bit slower than others, so it made me wonder if some might be faster. Just throwing it out there.

Keep us posted, I'm very interested.

ETA: @budsbirds is exactly who I was thinking of for the Heritage RIRs! Guess I should have kept reading before replying. LoL

 

[ochochicas]

We have one RIR that is from a hatchery. She is not mean and actually was the most friendly pullet we had. The only issue I had with her is that she matured way too quickly. She was twice as big as all the other chicks as they grew up. We were convinced she could be a cockerel until the day she turned 17 weeks and laid an egg. To this day she gets along great with all our other birds, even the younger ones. There are some personality "trends" among breeds, but overall I think it depends on the individual bird.

 

[elizmartin]

Thanks everyone for the advice!! It's very helpful! I'm definitely not looking "just" for production, I actually got chickens in the first place to be "tiller chickens" in my garden... Eggs were just a bonus.

but now that I've had a couple of years to figure out the direction I want our chicken keeping to go, I want to try processing for meat this year, so size/growth rate became a bigger priority... But I don't want to let egg production drop too much either. And my birds need to be able to free range as needed. I do coop them at night. Its nice to know that hatchery birds and birds from breeders have different personalities; I don't have enough experience with any breed to say for sure that I like their personalities, I simply have my favorites from the hens that I have. I'll definitely check out JFA, thanks for the link! And I'm not sure whether to have a mixed flock or a purebred flock, that's been something I'm struggling with. I'd like to contribute to some breed conservation, but I'd also like to be able to mix it up and breed for traits that I really like. So I'm leaning more towards a mixed flock. Again, thanks!

Another thought is if You decide on a favorite breed to conserve, have your roosters be from that breed and a few hens among the mixed hen group then You can do both????

 

[Ashley Stroud]

WA state, right here!!!

Hi and welcome!

 

[jbkirk]

WA state, right here!!!

hello and

 

[ShockValue]

Hi all! I've introduced myself in this thread about 10 months ago and occasionally lurk.. But now that we have some chickens under our belt that are now laying we've gotten chicken fever and would like more. We ended up with 4 Faverolles and 1 Speckled Sussex. All from a hatchery, and doing just fine. However, for the next round of birds we would like to hatch our own from fertile eggs. One of our Faverolles is always trying to go broody on us, so we thought - Why not let her do what she does best?

We love our girls, but I am generally unsatisfied with the quality we ended up with. They're very small and their coloring is off. No fear, I still tell them that they are gorgeous and that we love them very much (we don't need chickens with self-esteem issues, do we?)

Anyway, we are hoping to find some local folks with fertile eggs from quality genetics. I'm not looking to exhibition birds, but would like our girls to be at least 'a decent representation of the breed'...

If anyone knows folks who would be willing to be on speed-dial for selling fertile eggs the next time P.J. (our forever broody) hunkers down in the nest, I would love to get some contact information.

Breeds we're looking for:

Black Copper Marans
Welsummer
Legbar
Isbar
Ameraucana
White Leghorn
Black Australorp
Barred Rock

Obviously we won't be able to get all the breeds eggs at the same time under one broody, so I'm happy to go for whatever pops up and checking them off the list as a long term project as we go.

Our cranky flock after bath time a couple of months ago -

 

[Amberjem]

Good Morning.... Amberjem has a good idea...... JustFowlingAround has Sagitta... I bought mine from them... Nice folks...

http://justfowlingaround.weebly.com/breed-profiles/category/red-sagitta

I have 3 hens laying now and their eggs are from 54-72 grams... They laid 55 eggs in the last 21 days... 2.6 eggs/day... They are a large bird...

They are in Brewster Wa. and they do deliver all over the state in the warmer months...

what are there temperaments like?

 

[DaveOmak]

what are there temperaments like?

Where ???? Omak ???? It accidentally got above freezing a couple days ago..

 

[ochochicas]

CCL Farms in Yelm has Marans and also Ameraucanas. They don't sell eggs during the winter, but come spring you should be able to get some fertile hatching eggs.