Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[ochochicas]

Yes, the coyotes are out during the day. I saw one in the pasture one day around 10:00, which is exactly the time we lost a hen and a cockerel in the summer. Now the chickens can't go out to free range until after 11:00. They are getting smarter and staying close to our pony (who hunts furry animals for fun). Still, out best rooster got attacked by a coyote about a month ago.

We tried to treat our rooster with TLC, antibiotics and tube feeding. He was getting better, but then called it quits one day. We had to put him down. It was our first one we had to put down and it was terribly hard to do. It was the right thing and the right time, but we still miss him. He makes the cutest babies!

 

[Amberjem]

I'm fanatical about the safety of my coops and property now. Especially since a chicken dinner at my place could be worth a thousand bucks!

eh my SO teases me I built the coop like fort knox...I'm like hey everything wants to eat a chicken! and I wanna be the one to do it not something else

 

[catface]

That's right! Nobody eats my chickens but me!

 

[Theegoliath]

With all this talk of people loosing chickens to wild animals here, and on FB, I feel lucky. We have local raccoons, and see them monthly. They walk around during the day/early morning, out in plain sight in peoples front yards. So far, they have not gotten our girls, or even gone in our backyard where they free range all day long.

 

[Hinotori]

whats the diff between spangled and splash? I love how she looks like she splattered herself with white paint

Splash means they are black with two copies of blue. It's a white or light blue background with random splashes of blue/black.

Here are some of the splash silkies I had.

 

[ochochicas]

Raccoons are nasty animals, but also pretty smart. You can use that to your advantage. We had a whole colony of raccoons visiting our yard when we bought our house. The morons that lived her before us were feed them from the back door. The raccoons would actually try to get the back door open to get in the house. One night we shot at them and they have never come back. In the last 4 years I have only seen one stray raccoon wandering through the yard. It seems they figured out what to do if they want to live to see tomorrow.

 

[Amberjem]

thanks that clearly makes sense from spangled and splash is it only yhe blue under color or other color combos as well?

 

[Hinotori]

Splash is only blue. One copy of blue gives you a blue bird. Two gives you the splash

Many splash look white with the splashes

 

[Hinotori]

Wheaten can be splash wheaten. It turns the black to splash.

 

[frogHOLR]

MOUNTAIN LION!

It was late fall and she had 2 cubs on the ground at the base of the cherry tree. I'm not sure why she had cubs so late but she must have been desperate to feed them to take my ducks off my front porch. At that point, I was more than happy to let her eat my duck hen, who was dead by now anyway and I was standing there 15 feet from her cubs in my underwear. I went back to the house and collected the eggs out of the nest and hatched them.
That was on Hwy 9 North in Sedro Wooley.

I look back on that and can't believe I chased a mt lion in my underwear over a duck!!!

This last summer, I grabbed a Bald Eagle bare handed who was snatching up my softball-sized Freedom Ranger chicks by the fistful. I was in shorts, a t-shirt, and my SOCKS!

I heard my little guys squawking and freaking out, so I darted out of the house and found that rotten eagle stuck in my small pen. He couldn't get back out because his wing span was too wide. I didn't think at all; just dove in and grabbed the jerk. He managed to sink a couple of talons into my knee, but I wiped him on the fence until he let me go. My kids video taped me letting him go (as proof so the Feds don't haul me in!). I was fueled by adrenaline, that's for sure! And this sounds like near where your Mountain Lion sighting was, as I'm off Hwy9, north of Sedro! We've seen a Mountain Lion here once, but that was YEARS ago. I've seen quite a few bobcats (or some sort of huge bobcat hybrid - as these were bigger than any bobcat I've seen stuffed at a museum!). Now we put hot-wires up around the chicken fences/pens and that helps for a lot of the medium sized predators (possums, coons, coyotes, bobcats, and feral dogs).