Washingtonians

[ReiMiraa]

hey guys been really busy lately...

had some problems with my icelandic chicks... after 2 weeks they started dying off. I think its the feed. I now have them in a tractor with some feed and lots of grass to range on.

On another note my chickens are spoiled with cherries now.

I have had a severe drop in egg production. 12 a day compared to 35 2 months ago....
I have 2 ideas why they quit (i have searched everywhere and followed some to see where they are hiding, nothing... this is the unspoken idea # 3)
1. the stress from once having too many roosters (they have a new home) caused them to quit.
2. because they layed through the winter for their second year and were treated with good food and light.... but now with crappy weather... I think we have had more "solar hours" in the winter than we have this summer... so their biological clocks are backwards....

Any ideas?

Also I have noticed this one milli fleur rooster of mine has funny eyes. I finally got to look closer.. he is 1.5 years old... his left eye is fine but his right eye pupil is like completely dilated or runs everywhere... he sees fine out it.... just wondering what could cause this? His brother's eyes look normal.

 

[Ogress]

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A couple years ago Costco sold the series on DVD. My kids watch them over and over! Funny, Alex REFUSED to watch, but he was peeking, and then he was sucked in! Then he had to watch everything Muppets!

My son, who has grown up to be a perfectly normal human being (maybe nicer and more responsible than merely normal, but who am I to say) watched "Follow that Bird: the Sesame Street Movie" every day from the time he was about 18 months old until he started to preschool at 3 1/2. And I did not intentionally break or "lose" the video tape, which must mean it's a pretty good movie, right?

For Alex it was "Rainbow Fish" over and over. We drove down to Texas when he was 18 months old and he watched it over and over and over until the VHS tape stretched out too much. He'd laugh in hysterics every time the barracuda crashed throuhg the mirror.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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You will all hate me...but years ago I planted (Yes PLANTED) some blackberry bushes...hoping for berries. I could not get them to grow. They were not healthy. I did have some raspberries....but mother killed them.

They don't do well in heat, or dry weather, or on soil that's got too high a pH: that's why they haven't eaten Eastern Washington.

There was an abandoned farm just east of the I-5 US2 junction in Everett where you could see the very top of an old hay barn sticking up in the middle of about 80 acres of Himalaya blackberries: it was pretty scary.

I would just love to make some blackberry jam. YUM YUM

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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pyper sending good vibes:

Zoot sending get well vibes too:

 

[pettec63]

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I do ...



If I weren't so slammed up to my eyeballs with the farm in general, the csa, the goats, I'd have offered to come assist you in your plight in indianola ..

Ah thanks for the thought there renart!

I lucked out and sent my clients an email last night at 11:30... Hopped outta bed cause I just had this feeling that they would forget again! I got paid, chicens are happily pecing away at there food. The horses are just gonna have to wait until my sister can work them. Im starting to feel a little better, my chest isnt quite so painfull, so the prednisone must be doing its job. Still havnt touched the pain meds, dont want to iether. But Im starting to feel better!

feel better soon!!!

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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Woo hoo! I must've missed your first post. How does DH feel about these new chickies?

He doesn't know yet.

Hallerlake and RFF use the same "shock and awe" method.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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very cute.

 

[Ogress]

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It's sad you are losing Icelandics. I don't know what would cause it.

I had a problem with one of my chicks, but I seem to have solved it. I have 4 bantam Cochins and 1 LF cochin chick in the same pen. The LF does not grow as fast as the Bantams, she used to be a lot larger than the others and now she is the same size. 2 weeks ago, I mixed the feed (20% Max Grow from Scott) with chick scratch - half and half, so I could stretch out what I had until I could pick up my next bag. Wednesday evening, I noticed the LF cochin chick was wobbling badly which caused the others to pick on it and deny it food. I looked up "wobbly chick" here and someone posted the same problem with the same breed and same age chick. They had also mixed 50% scratch in with their feed. The problem was a vitamin B defficiency. Yesterday morning I pulled their food, replaced it with medicated Start-n-grow (since I had not mixed it with scratch), gave the chick some poultry drench and also put some in their water. A few hours later the wobbling stopped, and the chick is just fine again.

As far as the laying goes, have you checked for mites? I gave all mine a dose of Eprinex and 2 weeks later I had a jump in egg production. The eggs are larger too, and even before I treated I only saw a few mites on less than half the chickens, and none on the rest. I don't know if the mites were stressing them or if it was something else. My girls also layed through the winter, at least as many eggs as I am getting now (average 6 per day from 8 hens now), and I did not provide any light nor any heat; and we had a cold winter with lots of snow.

 

[SadieSue]

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He doesn't know yet.

Hallerlake and RFF use the same "shock and awe" method.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

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Thank you - feelin better.
Kids - no way will I give them your number. They work me now as it is. I'm exhausted. I think teenage boys get PMS too.

Glad yer feelin better. And of course they do it's Poor Mee Syndrome

LOL...so true.
Right now I am home on lunch break and the middle DS and the DD are going at it like cats and dogs. I am ignoring. I want to relax for 45 minutes before I go to work. They will figure it out.

I hope.