Washingtonians

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

OK for anybody looking to build an incubator or install a fan in a still air LISTEN UP ! ! ! DO NOT spend too much on a fan! I just scrapped a Wolfe tanning bed. In it was 8 yes eight nice 115 VAC fans. PERFECT for bators. They are about 4" square and 1 1/2" +/- thick. They will be cheap to chicken buddies.

Hey there, I was just getting ready to order one. Started my "freeezer-bator" some months ago....never finished. Got the heating element sitting right here. Needed to order a fan. Let me know. PM me if you would like.

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

Somebody is getting their face fluff as I call it. HA HA! It looks like she is smiling at us! This is Flash my son's 8 week old EE.

Flash and Hope, LOVE our EE's!!! that is Splash in the background

*had to edit my spelling...lol

Very cute. How are the newbies settling in?

 

[4cats3kids1hubby2many]

Oh, that's awesome. I wish I could do that with my dogs but they think if it moves, it might kill them. They don't even like getting in the truck to go places.


I took some pictures I wanted to share

The only broody thing here right now. She didn't like the camera much. I walk up to within touching distance and she just looks at me. The male is more skittish and runs off when I get within 5 feet when he's on the nest. This is the third clutch of eggs this year, first batch got flooded before she actually started setting, was to close to the water. Second clutch was right beside the drive. I moved a road cone a few feet from it to mark it so no one ran it over. She hatched out those four a couple months ago. Something got one before it fledged, and one of the others went missing last week. The juveniles fly around by the house all the time.




These should be hatching soon. She laid them 3 weeks or so ago. This clutch is in the middle of the road in front of our carport

. I marked it with the road cone again, and we've not been driving over that way. The birds mostly ignore my dogs, as the dogs treat them like chickens and mostly ignore them. The german shepherd gets bird in her face sometimes because she's an oaf and doesn't look where she's going. But no aggression from the dog, just startles her and gets her to move back.





And we had a visitor in our trees. Usually they hang out in the neighbors huge snag. The canadian geese with a bunch of goslings were going nuts with him in the tree. Trying to hide their babies and yell at him to go away. Finally one of the resident ravens chased him off. It was sitting off to the left of him in another tree.

Kill Deer are very cool. We have a lot of them here too. Love to watch them.
Bald Eagle pretty too. Lots here along the river.

eta: I posted the wrong bird type. Not enough coffee this morning I guess.

Alright..off to have more coffee now....
...work more on coop....
....weed garden.....
.....move/rearrange birds.
Everyone have a nice day. I will only be on here occasionallly as I feel like I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off - ooops, sorry for that analogy.

 

[itsren]

I knew someone was gonna say that. DARN! There goes my great plan.

I plan on all roosts being same height. Now just gotta redesign where I want to put them.

THANKS for the response!!!!!

Friday night I was messing with my coop design and ended up redesigning where, and how I'll put our roosts. Technically, with 3 birds, I only need 1 bar but came up with a new spot for a window and wanted to put a bar in front of the window, too. I'm going to have to use a closet rod holder to hold one side of the window roost, because of the way the wall/door will be, but I think it will work.

With the new design, if we ever add more chickens to the max number of birds we're allowed (6), I'll have plenty of roost space for 6. I plan to have the roost bars the same height, and "L" shaped.

I read somewhere to make sure they have 2-foot headroom. 1-foot space in front and 1-foot in back of each roost bar. The minimum is 10" roost bar per bird. Since we have a Brahma, I made sure we have more bar space per bird than that. Now the challenge is to figure out a ladder so my Brahma can actually get to the roost!

Right now, the other two sleep in the roost and she sleeps on the floor below them. They did this even before she hurt her leg, so I don't know if she'll just never be able to fly very high. I've never seen her lift off more than 1 foot.

 

[itsren]

But this is my first time growing such a tall flower here. The foxglove are about 18 inches away from the window.

Thoughts?

I'm not sure about the location of the flowers by the window. Humming birds just hit windows every now and then. We've had them hit our front window, too. We wonder if they see "through" (window-to-window) and try to fly through from the front yard to the back yard. We don't have flowers planted near the window in the front yard so that's why we wonder if they're looking through to the back yard. They've always hit the front window, which is the shady side of our house. We do have flowers visible from the window in the back yard.

A side note about the foxglove. They're one of my absolute favorites, but I don't plant them because they are very poisonous. Make sure your chickens can't get near them. They are used to make heart medication, such as digitalis. If they are ingested, they will slow or stop a heart. I learned this from my cardiologist, so I would suspect that it is true. I had to be on a beta-blocker for a few years after my twins were born. I had post-partum eclampsia and my organs had begun to shut down. I was in congestive heart failure at the time of the twin's birth. The effects of the beta-blockers are pretty powerful, and, from what I was told, it takes very little of that plant to cause the same, or worse, effect.

That's so sweet you took the little hummingbird to PAWS. I hope it makes it.

 

[itsren]

Can someone tell me the current law or code for how far away a coop has to be from the property line? I live in Gig Harbor and I called the Gig Harbor city place and was told there are no regulations for chickens or coops, but my very ornery neighbor said the pierce county law says the coop has to be 45 ft away from her house or property? Ugh I'm so stressed out! I can't find the current law on it anywhere. And do I listen to the Gig Harbor law that says I'm fine or pierce county? I thought we were all good and our coop is almost done. If anyone could help me I would be so grateful!!

Each city has it's own code. Is your city code online anywhere? We have access to the full text of our code. I've never looked into county code, but I would think, if you are in city limits, you would fall under city code - because I can't imagine the city would write code that didn't support county code (well, I CAN imagine it, but that would be rather ridiculous). If the city doesn't have code for it... maybe you automatically default to county code? I don't know!

In Auburn, it is 15 feet from the edge of our own property. I have read that some cities have set their codes as high as 90 feet - but those cities don't allow backyard chickens on smaller lots, either.

I had to wait for 3 years before getting chickens because I had to wait for the city to finally agree that backyard chickens were OK. We finally got the OK this past November.

 

[hallerlake]

Quote: I have poison hemlock in my yard. My birds ignore it. So long as they have plenty of alternatives, I expect they will continue to do so.

The usual foxglove are biennials. They bloom the second year, and then, die. There are perennial foxgloves. There are a bunch of different species, but the most common is Digitalis grandiflora. D grandiflora isn't as big as the biennial one, but it's a pretty butter yellow, and lives indefinitely. It seeds itself around moderately. There's a sort of apricot hybrid called 'Goldcrest', too. They had a couple of the 'Goldcrest' on the half price table at Swanson's yesterday. If you're interested, I could pick up one or both for you. PM me.

 

[StarryEyzz]

Started our coop this weekend. 4x8 shed type with a front porch and back "carport" to park the lawn mower and hang gardening tools. The chicken door to run will come out the right end with an entry door at the left end.



Obviously, the current firepit will need to be relocated!

Below is the view from driveway...next to the bare garden. Late start this year.

We installed a window that DH got from a customer. Going to paint the coop 'rocking chair red, with white trim'.

More work/building today.......

 

[itsren]

Chickenwings... your photography is stunning!

 

[itsren]

We installed a window that DH got from a customer. Going to paint the coop 'rocking chair red, with white trim'.

More work/building today.......

What a great design! Have fun finishing it. I can't wait to see final pictures.