Washingtonians

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Quote:
And you could swing by my place & pick up a few birds, too! LOL

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

I just posted my updated sales list...thought I'd drop a link here too, since we're all in Washington! I am planning to take my excess birds to the barter faire next month if not sold!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=2846433#p2846433

 

[Greg Richardson]

KMHunter.

Any advice on getting through the rainy, cold and damp fall, winter and spring?

What I'm trying is instead of dirt run I put sod in. I knew it wouldn't last but so far it's doing what I hoped it would do aftyer the grass gone in places and that is stop the puddles. Still growing in some spots.

Not sure if you know Lake Margaret area 7 miles out of Duvall but up on this mountain the rain just hammers us up here as does the snow so this winter I'll see how long the sod works. If I have to I can bring more in as my yard is quite big and rather have garden area's then grass anyways so slowly but surely going that route. I'm expecting I will need to eventually replace parts here and there.

Other thing I did was to have large roof over hang all around except on back of coop.

What I want to do is not say to myself oh I'll take care of that later cause the rain is hammering me.
That happens with every hobby the burn out factor because of some phase of the hobby.

Staying dry is lot better then being in a hurry.
Also I have a cowboy hat next to the door.
Best hat on God's green earth imo.
Really does a nice job in snow or rain keeping you dry.

If you ever see any great deals at the feed store in Woodinville post them. I try to do the same for the Monroe Del's and Farm & Feed. Some day I need to see if Duvall feeds is competitive at all. mayb e I'll stop in later today. Always been in such a habbit getting my stuff in Monroe for some reason.​

 

[Greg Richardson]

Equibling. LOL!
I need to stick to my game plan here which is pick up a few chicks next Feb/March time line. Not that I'm not tempted but I also want to fence off more of my place so they can free range without me needing to check on them all the time.
Still trying to figure out cheapest fence plus where exactly to put it so any future building built it doesn't cost me a lot of time and money to change things.

I hope I can make it to the fair over there. Not sure if it was you or someone else that posted about the fair but that's how I found out about it is from here. Great excuse to go visit the area I love. Finances will unfortunately be the deciding factor if we come or not.

 

[weaveagarden]

Quote:
Well, it is my first time in 30 years, and I am not sure we gave anything much thought back then in regard to chickens, except getting food in and poop and eggs out.

This year I am doing sand for my outer chicken enclosure. So far it is a charm. Water runs through, and chickens stay high and mostly dry. I am also going to cover the whole thing with greenhouse roofing before November so that they don't spend all of their time inside for 6 months. I have only had the sand down for a couple of days, but it has rained, and the chickens seem to love it. (It is also going to save me on buying grit as the play sand has lots of larger pieces as well.

Inside, I am doing the deep litter method that you can search and learn about here. Or look in the coop design topic area. It is often mentioned and explained. I am using white wood shavings and stall dry. So far so good. I have been using it for about a month.... No odors and no hassles. We will see in the winter. But I am told that I just keep adding shavings and stall dry to freshen as well as fluffing the whole works so that oxygen can get in to freshen it all.

Good luck to you!

 

[KMHunter]

Excel,
Their Layer feed is $13 something for a 50 lb bag. I like Del's too though. They have a better selection of all the other things you might need for chickens, ie: Sulmet, Tylan syringes, etc. I like De Youngs because I now know everyone there. I have my rainboots and rain jacket ready to go by the door now.

 

[KMHunter]

Weaveagarden, I put sand down in the run a few weeks ago. I love it! It is like a big cat litter box. I walk through with a cat litter scoop and get some of the poop out without taking a lot of the sand. Keeps things a little cleaner. I am sort of doing the deep litter method. I clean out the bad spots under the roosts everyday and add DE and more shavings as needed. I will see how this goes as the weather gets worse. Does stall dry work better than DE?

 

[justbugged]

Well this has been a hard weekend! Some of the eggs hatched. I had sixteen viable eggs in the bator. (out of 36) I had six of the eggs hatch. The first chick needed a lot of help. I don't think we had the humidity right at first. We got the chick hatched only to have it drown in the very small bowl of water that we had put in the bator to raise the humidity. That just hurt. Then three more chicks hatched without any problems. It was pip and zip. Then one more started to hatch, and it to was not able to hatch by it self. We wait over a day for to hatch by it's self, and it just kept cheeping. So today we helped it out of the shell. The poor little chick had a deformed foot. It was way to little, and the others were picking at it right away. I tried to see if I could splint the foot, but that wasn't possible. So I went ahead put it down. That hurt bad again. But the upside is I have three little chicks that working hard at surviving. The other eggs don't look like they will hatch. Oh well! I just have to remind myself that it was just an experiment using eggs that I bought just for food. I still wish thing had turned out better than they did. I don't know if I will try incubating again. I know for sure I won't use bantam eggs for sure. Well I hope everyone else is doing great after the holiday weekend.

 

[weaveagarden]

Quote:
I don't have any experience with the DE. But I have some now, so I am thinking about adding some of that as well. I am down to less than half a bag of stalldry right now. Stall dry is basically a mixture of DE and volcanic clay. Looks a bit like clumping cat litter. But it is lighter in weight.

 

[Greg Richardson]

Can't remember what I paid at Monroe Farm and Feeds. Is this a good buy?



Oyster Shell for your chickens - $3 (Carnation)

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Date: 2009-09-08, 6:14PM PDT
Reply to: [email protected] [Errors when replying to ads?]

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Are the eggshells on your chicken eggs getting thin? Eggs cracking too easily? Supplement your chicken food with oyster shell, and the issue will go away!

I had to buy way too much oyster shell, and now the rest sitting around. I measured 5+ lbs of oyster shell out per bag and will be happy to move it along to you. $3 per 5 lb bag.

It stores well, and hopefully you won't have to buy way too much for your backyard chicken flock!

I can meet you as far north as Monroe, as far east as Redmond, and as far South as Issaquah/Bellevue. If you are reading this, then I still have it available.