Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Manningjw]

Oh yeah, I'm still around. Mostly lurking in the background. I don't usually like to post but I do here and there if the mood suits me. Glad you still have one left! I only have one of my original 16 hens (she is 9 years old and still lays 3x a week!) and 2 of the chicks related to your girl. I gave my older hens to a family that promised to give them a good home. Post a picture of your girl!
Here is one of her siblings, now Boss Hen after a Bobcat killed 9 of my hens and all of my new pullets I had bought as replacements for my older gals. Was your hen's father the Blue Ameraucana x Leghorn or the Blue Ameraucana x EE? I can't remember who I had when you picked up the eggs? I have a totally different flock now and I have Wheaten Ameraucana plans for the future!

Your hen's sibling(probably you know how chickens are) She lays a light olive egg

Front left the black hen with white specks on her head is the original girl we call "Grandma." She is also the friendly bird in my profile picture. Still laying eggs as well. I will have a few of her eggs in the incubator for my upcoming hatch-a-long for Cinco de Mayo. If anyone has an empty incubator you should join us! Or just be ready to adopt one of the MANY extra chicks I will have

. Planning to set about 36 eggs, plan to keep 4-5 pullets so guessing maybe 25 extras will be going elsewhere!

 

[Manningjw]

Oh and when I got my eggs from you, you had just lost your favorite EE rooster Oreo I think? The Ameraucana x Leghorn was the father of my birds. I kept 2 roosters 3 hens from my original hatch. I specifically tried to keep and breed only the birds that hatched from the Austra-whites. I gave a friend 2 of the pullets then I bred the favorite rooster to my White Leghorn and ended up with Austra-white looking hens that lay a nice blue egg. Still have those girls and several other girls related to the original stock.

 

[pennyJo1960]

@ chickielady
I could take a few very few but would love 2 or 4, I even kept my nice little brooder pen intact

 

[clawstar]

I am seriously thinking about raising quail. I keep seeing listings for snowflake quail and I like the look of them, plus I think they are bobwhites and have white meat, but since I have not raised quail before it seems more economical to start with coturnix since they are more common and seem like they are easy to raise.

Ideally I would like to trade chicken eggs for quail eggs or chickens for quail so there is no start up costs. We already have some nice bird enclosures my husband built for older chicks that we have not used much because the feathered chicks are able to transition outside into the Silkie coop rather than moving into indoor brooders in our shop in order to move them off heat. We can easily set the light on a timer to keep up egg production year round so we can have a steady supply of eggs and meat.

I would love to eat our surplus roosters because I have raised my own meat in the past but we raise our chickens like pets rather than meat and none of us wants to kill birds we have become attached to as babies. I think the quail would be something we could remain unattached to and see them as a food supply because they are not as friendly and they grow so fast, plus they would all look alike and have more of a wild bird appearance.

If anyone in the area has an abundance of quail or eggs, I would love to hear from you. I researched the blue egg genetics but it seems sort of hit and miss to get them once you have blue egg layers so I don't necessarily need to raise blue egg lines but it would be kind of fun to breed for blue eggs. I got a Quechoa rooster to put over our two Easter Egger hens to bring back some of the original blue egg genetics but I have not started hatching yet since I need to get on my feet again before I start up the incubators (although I have Silkies that would probably hatch the eggs and raise the chicks for me if I let them).

Anyway, I would like to get started with some quail in the near future and see where it takes us. Hatching eggs would be the cheapest way to get started but then having my own egg layers would be even better. I could potentially start with chicks but that is the longest route to get eggs to hatch and hatching is how we will keep a steady supply of eggs and meat going.

I like chicken eggs okay but I like hatching them even more because that makes more chickens! It is terrible to have Spring fever and all of my incubators are empty for now. Certainly a batch of quail will fill the void, eh?

Anyone who wants quail can just PM me, I have quail, they are not jumbos but they are large healthy birds. Unlike most I raise mine in an aviary and they eat lots of greens and bugs!
I live in the lakestevens granite falls area

 

[CGilbert]

Anyone who wants quail can just PM me, I have quail, they are not jumbos but they are large healthy birds. Unlike most I raise mine in an aviary and they eat lots of greens and bugs!
I live in the lakestevens granite falls area

Much closer to the Seattle area than Spokane

 

[Duck Drover]

I saw someone up that way had Snowflakes listed on Craigslist but now I have talked myself out of the Bobwhite varieties, mainly because I would have to wait until the following year for hatchlings to become productive. I would love to keep quail outdoors but the appeal of being able to raise them in cages where they are out of the sight of our neighbors is what has me wanting to try some.

Our chickens and ducks are grandfathered in because we had them before the code change but I am expecting to get harrassed in retaliation because our code enforcement officer is such a bully. We have built privacy fences to "hide" our birds more but the fact that our next door neighbors are so nosy makes me feel stalked in my own back yard. If we can no longer keep more than 5 chickens and/or ducks in our yard at some point in the future, I want to have a means of raising food for my family. Right now we have far more backyard birds than I ever wanted because we had to keep so many of the ones we hatched before the code change. Now that we have selected the birds we want to keep as breeders, we can do a flock reduction and sell everything we hatch before they reach maturity.

Because we are hungry but not wealthy, the majority of our grocery budget goes towards grains to fill our stomachs but I want to be able to have enough protein too (without surviving on peanut butter and jelly). I want to be as self-sufficient as possible even though we can't afford acreage yet (we need more equity in this house for a down payment on land). I see raising quail as a means towards healthy living but I am still considering all the factors, one of them being how to convince my husband that it is a good idea.

My daughter just loves birds and she has not had to worry about putting food on the table while I consider raising birds to be more practical to our survival. I am hoping she will be able to see the quail as meat birds since our dual purpose Orpingtons are just "pets with benefits" to her. I have raised my own meat for many years of my life but it is far more challenging now that we live in a neighborhood instead of on acreage (which I always rented so I paid someone else's mortgage instead of my own).

 

[Hinotori]

Silkietown is coming along pretty well. Will be four 10x20 pens (half roofed) that open on a 20x20 courtyard.

I need to move houses and get the roofs done.

Thinking about leaving one pen open for the dogs. Put a big enough house in there.

 

[SeattleSelkie]

Last year I was sooooo smug.......I overwhelmingly hatched and purchased straight-run chicks who ended up being pullets. I had to rehome a few cockerels and it was easy.

This year my husband has christened us RoosterRanch. It seems near everything we hatch out is a male. I have a hatch list for pullets and am keeping them waiting because it is boy-boy-boy around here. One more batch is in the incubator and my fingers are crossed.

Anyone else have years where it seems only one sex hatches? I was daydreaming of a time when you can tell from the egg what sex the chicks will be and only set a cockerel egg when one actually wants one....

 

[pennyJo1960]

Last year I was sooooo smug.......I overwhelmingly hatched and purchased straight-run chicks who ended up being pullets. I had to rehome a few cockerels and it was easy.

This year my husband has christened us RoosterRanch. It seems near everything we hatch out is a male. I have a hatch list for pullets and am keeping them waiting because it is boy-boy-boy around here. One more batch is in the incubator and my fingers are crossed.

Anyone else have years where it seems only one sex hatches? I was daydreaming of a time when you can tell from the egg what sex the chicks will be and only set a cockerel egg when one actually wants one....

I guess that is the main reason I have not wanted the whole egg
hatching game what to to do with the unwanted

 

[Gatewayto]

Unwanted chicken = chicken noddle soup?

We purchased 3 pullets from Wilco - 1 I believe will be a male -- smaller in size, longer leg, crown is coming out earlier and larger than others. Still keeping he/she around to keeps the other 3 chicken company.

We are delaying hatching our quails for unknown length of time now due to too many house project at this time. Anyone wants fertile quail eggs (white Texas A&M and brown Japanese coturnix)? PM me if you like some. Getting 22 eggs a day.