Washingtonians

[Chickielady]

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I will keep trying!

I'm here. I just don't have much to say. I'm trying to figure how to cover my runs for the winter. Mr. Hallerlake thinks my hoop roof idea won't work. He thinks it won't be strong enough.

I saw your plans, and they look strong enough to me, for the snow load, right?

 

[cheryl98117]

I just hada total fit about 20 minutes ago! I found my incubator unplugged! And I know who did it, he's just lucky that he left... Stupid disrespectful 18 year old twit of a nephew!!! Im glad the eco 20 holds heat well. Temps only dropped to 80 degrees. But I am so very mad.

And all because he didn't ask what plug to use to plug in his computer for a facebook fix! Grrr!

 

[Illia]

Okay, just steppin' in here to say -


Cute EE chicks! "Quarta" is a boy btw

Will grow to have a golden duckwing color


The Turkey / News reporter video. . .

Wow that is an idiot of a woman. . . .


And last - Chickielady - Your chick will grow to look exactly like a Brown-Red Ameraucana. Quite unlikely carrying blue though, if it is, it's a dark blue.

Oh, and . . . . My flock got attacked by a Cooper's Hawk today.

Bright and early in the morning, the thing came swooping smack in the middle of the crowd of girls, thankfully missed,

then as I went running out there yelling, calling the remaining girls to run and hide, it perched up in a tree to stare at me for a few minutes. I stared back, yelled at it, then it flew off.

The event was quite a distance from my CD's hung and there was absolutely no breeze to get them moving, so I'm not sure if they're just ineffective or the distance+lack of wind allowed the incident to happen. Either way I've been on the look-out all day, and put up a new line of CD's and shiny stuff. If it doesn't work I'm just gonna string up wire over that area of the pasture, it should stall the birds from swooping down so easily. There's no way I can just net up the pasture, and it seems to be this ONE spot the predators (bobcat) like.

 

[Kaneke]

thanks Illia, I learn something every time you post

 

[Illia]

You're welcome.

Post more especially when they're feathered and I'll be able to sex em ALL. Any chipmunk, striped, or spotted chick can be sexed by color as soon as it feathers out well enough.

 

[HoneysuckleHills]

I am just sick.
I'm missing one of my girls.
(Dottie - the one I got from you, Hallerlake.)
I've been all over the neighborhood but no one has seen her.
Any ideas?

 

[Sudsy Chick]

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I'm so sorry! Did she not show up at bedtime? I'm not sure of your setup - is there a run and could she be in a corner? Once ours got caught out past dark and they all found a dark corner by the coop. So sorry and good luck!

 

[Sudsy Chick]

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I'm still referring to this post while trying to figure out what we have in our chicks

I think...oh jeez...I have no idea! LOL You know I will be asking later!

 

[Ogress]

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Hopefully you will find her safe in your garage.

I came home to find a huge raccoon walking up my driveway while my hens were still out. Thankfully I got to the hens before he did, so they are all safe in the coop. I think the grapes growing along my fence and up the tree have brought the raccoons back..

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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Ah, rats, I was hoping that one was a pullet. That's a sex-linked color, then?

I really doubt CDs will discourage Cooper's Hawks from anything, and monofilament or wire will need moved around every once in a while, because they learn what holes they fit though. I've seen my resident Cooper's Hawk hen bomb through a bunch of blackberries and a four-strand barbed wire fence at about thirty MPH. She just folded her wings and twisted and was gone- it was part of the same episode that led to the Cooper's Hawk photo I posted a few pages back, where she was harrassing a spring migrant juvenile by coming up at her from the plum and blackberry tangle below the power pole. I'll bet, though, that it was a migrant bird that went after your chickens, especially if they were LF. The only time I've seen either of my local pair go after a chicken it was that Bantam Brahma cockerel a couple of weeks ago. They take young crows and starling/blackbird size birds and quail and struggle with pigeons. I know I flipped when it happened, but I suspect anything over a kilo is probably safe from them. Migrants, and especially birds of the year, are less good at judging target size (just as the passage bird in my photo was stymied by her unfamiliarity with the terraine and had to take a stand against the resident bird instead of flying off into cover) and will try to catch anything with feathers. Chicks and fledgelings and bantams would probably be really vulnerable to resident birds, though.

It's weird for me: I've been watching hawks (and hanging out with falconers) for four decades, and observing free-range chickens off and on for longer, but it's just now that there's sufficient raptor population density to really learn much about their interaction when I'm also around chickens a lot.