Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Chicken Rustler]

Those of you using Google Chrome I have found the sticky note app very helpful for business and personal use.
Every time you get online there is your notes to view.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/sticky notes app

Greg is that for those with internet on cell phone or is it for say lap top ?? I am not real sharp that way and don't have net on my cell.

 

[Cowgirlgrace]

Quote: May sound like a dumb question but maybe just because I'm not a 'note taker'? What do you mean by notes? You mean like reminders and stuff? I'm not very organized. I scribble to do lists on paper sometimes but the list never gets checked off and most times I lose the list! And I don't have a fancy phone, the 4G ones I guess they call them. I would spend too much time on it and never get anything done. Whenever I get a new phone Im always asking them, don't you just have a regular phone? They don't like to see me coming cause I never spend any money, LOL. Thirty dollars more per phone per month is more than I can spend.

 

[JennS]

I used to love the Holidays and getting together with family. Everyone would bring something and it would be a fun time. When we moved to WA 20 years ago we came because we had family here. Both my brother and sisters families were here and my sisters husbands family who we loved. Then they all moved away and we are here by ourselves. A few times we've made the trek to Cali but got tired of it since the cost fell on us and no one ever wanted to come up here so I said thats it. I'm not going to pick up and move just to follow family around the country. I'm not going to travel every Holiday when I'm the only one willing to travel to be with them. So it's usually just the 4 of us with me doing the whole meal. All my friends are with their families so there is no one to invite. The boys are older now and the oldest usually has a girlfriend he wants to be with. My husband and the boys used to put up the lights but my husband doesn't care anymore so if I want lights it's up to me. Just another thing to have to do and if no one cares why bother. I am dreading cooking this year. It's just not the same anymore. Depressing.

We moved out here for my husband's job 12 years ago, and have no family nearby. Most of ours is in Texas, but my sister is in Minnesota and one sister-in-law is in Virginia. We have settled into a routine of flying to TX for the holidays every other year, and spending 2-3 weeks driving all over the state (usually put 2K miles in the rental car). Add in pet sitting fees and it usually costs us $2500 to go see family. Now that we have our son, I feel that it is very important to spend the time down there so he can know his relatives as more than faces and voices on Skype. But we can't afford to go every year. On the off years we set up a nice, live tree in the living room and decorate it. I hang a few decorations around the house. If I am very ambitious I might gets lights up in the front window. We have a nice meal, play some holiday music and open a few gifts. Last year was our son's first Christmas at home, so he had quite a few boxes under the tree. We have made a few good friends since moving here (most of whom are also transplants from other states) and if any are also home we invite them, but usually we are on our own. So, Christmas is celebrated by our family but usually not in a huge way, unless we are in Texas and then it means reuniting with family more than anything else. On the other hand, Thanksgiving is always celebrated here and we get together with friends, take turns hosting, and cook an enormous feast because we all love to cook and/or love to eat. It's an occasion to cook enough to feed everyone for a week.

Oh, and our families also don't come visit. We've gotten my husband's parents up here once, my mom up here once (for my son's first birthday), my brother and sister once (although my brother was just passing through), and 1 of my husband's 3 siblings. My dad has never visited and probably won't. Every year I try to get *someone* to come up, but usually we are alone up here. And we are on pretty good terms with our family, they just all have jobs or other obligations in the way. It can get depressing.

Jennifer

 

[hallerlake]

Quote: With my parents gone, I don't expect to see my brothers and sister who live out of the area for the holidays again. I may never see any of them again except at funerals when they start happening. Maybe that's unduly pessimistic. One of my brothers and my sister will eventually retire to the NW. I may see them then.

 

[Slinglings]

Quote: My story is pretty much the same, except dh's parents (from MN) visit a *lot*, 3-4 times a year for a week at a time. They are here right now in fact We moved to Seattle from Iowa for DH's job in 2000. I am from Iowa, DH is from MN. My mom is in IA (she has visited 3 or 4 times in 13 years) dh's brother is in TX (has visited 3x and has never invited us there), dh's sister is in MN (has visited 4 or 5 times), my brother is in IA (has never visited us and never wants to see us when we do go to IA).

I hate traveling to MN/IA in the winter so we celebrate holidays here alone. We go there every 2 or 3 years in the summer. Fly, then drive 1500 miles all over MN, WI, IA, IL.

 

[FirewifeJess]

Wow. It just took me an hour to catch up with the thread! I need some coffee now!

We've been super busy, but life's going good. Still doing school every day, and just plugging along enjoying the family. The chickens are so happy the rain is here because I'm letting them out now. There was so much poop all over the yard during the late summer that I quarantined the chickens to the run for many weeks, just so we didn't have to step all over even more poop. Well it's slowly all being washed away and I've been letting them free-range all day, every day, for over a week now. Feeding them is MUCH cheaper now! The wind is howling and it's pouring out there right now and I can still see half the flock combing the creek bed for bugs.

Egg quality is finally improving again too. Their shells were suddenly much thinner toward the end of the summer, despite putting them on layer feed and giving them oyster shell. It was weird. Now I'm supplementing some vitamin D twice a week in their oatmeal and letting them free range, and things are improving. We're averaging 6 eggs a day lately, from 9 confirmed layers; 3 aren't laying now. OK gotta go already, took me so long to catch up now I can't stay and chat!

 

[TerrorBird]

There's a power struggle going on with two of my birds right now. Pengin, the smallish 6-month-old non-laying Australorp with virtually no comb or wattles, is the leader of my four young ones. My new 4.5 month LO rooster (needs a name) is trying to establish himself as head honcho. He's not aggressive and is easily spooked by my girls at this point. When I let them out this morning and they were running around in their yard, she sidled up to him and puffed her neck feathers out vigorously. Poor guy freaked and ran. I couldn't help but laugh. She refuses to give up her position without a fight!

 

[SadieSue]

Hi, new here and would like some information on where you all get your chicks from. Local or mail order? I would prefer local, but I am looking for silkie bantams and have not seen many of those.

Thanks and I am enjoying reading all of the posts!

Gigi

Welcome to the WA thread! You don't say what part of WA you're in. That might help so we can direct you to those who have the birds you desire.

I have silkie pullets, but they were hatched from eggs from a wonderful silkie breeder in Yacoult, WA. There are others who may have chicks in the spring.

Is your coop built yet? How soon are you wanting chicks?

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Apparently the Hawthorn berries are ripe: every robin in the neighborhood is gorging on them. I'm taking the tree out as soon as I can get the tree guy here, since it's chewing on the roof- it may be all I can afford to have done, even though I also need to have the old peach tree taken out (last summer it had five, head sized, peaches twenty feet off the ground) and at least most of the blackthorn by the front porch. The blackthorn took some ice damage, but the other two, which I dearly want rid of, sailed through the ice storm with all their twigs intact.



The chickens loved the peaches, but it's not a big enough part of their diet to keep it shading out the south windows in winter. The others are just thorny nuisances, and the Hawthorn has the added problem of smelling of diaper pail in the evenings when ity blooms.

I own a girl chainsaw, and I love to use it. So if you want the tree down, I would happy to come play at your house. Just give me a PM.

I'm up for feeding a work party, but the Tree Guy (whose name is Tobey, and who is a family friend who shows up and works cows when he's free) has a professional grade chipper-shredder which I need to have put into use on some existing prunage.

I have a girl chipper too, but I need to get the blade sharpened on it before it would be up to chipping much. I have found that I don't need heavier equipment most of the time. So the semi whimpy equipment seems to handle most of the jobs that come up on a city lot. If I was living out on a couple more acres I would definitely need to have real yard equipment. I normally hate to work with bad equipment. I have found that I can always rent Uf Da equipment if I can't manage with what I own. 

We don't own what we used to be able to borrow/hire from friends and relatives, but as we all age and get less strong and agile there's both less to borrow and fewer competent operators. I've never been allowed heavy equipment privileges because of some inconvenient neurological quirks, like having my vision get wonky when I'm exposed to noise (visual migraine; also why I had to stop using sewing machines) and all-around lack of depth perception.

Oh. More on electrical ebola: while my pair of small Ryobi drills were sitting quietly unused as everything went to heck and beyond this summer, either their batteries or their electronic motors got all wimpy and moribund-ike. I seriously cannot afford another drill, nor use the heavier models, so I'm going to have to use the plug-in Craftsman to finish framing the long-delayed Hamburg coop. UGH.

Also, woke up this morning to the peak storm winds roaring through the oak trees and my ears popping from the pressure drop, and then looked at the US Barometric Pressure Map to see that we were 20 points higher than the center of Sandy.

In short: eek, and praying for people on the other coast.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

BBS is three different colors. You have to choose, blue, black or splash. Lol!

What I was trying to say is that I realize I'm not limited to just a black roo for my black girl, but maybe could consider either a blue, black, or splash boy for her.

If you have a black pullet, and get a black boy for her, you will have all black chicks.
If you get a splash boy for her, you will get all blue chicks.
If you get a blue boy for her, you will get 50% black chicks and 50% blue chicks, no splash.

For those wanting to understand the BBS thing better, think of a blue bird as having one diluter gene to black and one black gene. So if bred with a black bird, two things can happen, as each bird throws out one gene. Black only has black, so will throw out a black gene. Blue can throw black also (result is black chick), or it can throw the diluter gene, which dilutes the other birds black gene, and results in a blue chick.

Splash birds have two copies of the diluter gene. So if you breed two splashes together, they both throw a diluter gene and you have only splash chicks.

Now if you breed two blue birds, lots of things can happen. Each bird can throw black, which results in black chicks 25% of the time. Or one can throw the blue diluter gene, and one can throw black, which results in blue chicks 50% of the time, or , they both can throw a diluter gene, which results in splash 25% of the time.


Remember the chart:

Black x black = 100% black
Black x blue = 50% black and 50% blue
Blue x blue = 25% splash, 50% blue, 25% black
Blue x Splash = 50% blue and 50% splash
Splash x Splash = 100% splash

Good explanation, thank you. Genetics is a mysterious business to those of us who haven't studied it!

I'm going to be breeding an EE or Ameraucana Roo to my silverish EEs and SSH with improper combs looking to eventually get a blue spangled blue egg laying something, because reasons. And the chicken calculator says a splash Roo over silver gives blue, so I am looking at going splash first.