Washingtonians

[Ogress]

Oh my goodness... my little Drama reeks so bad tonight!  I could smell her halfway across the yard.  I don't have any pet shampoo... does it have to be a special shampoo?  If I'm going to buy something, I want to buy the right thing.

So... tonight we finally moved the coop from the back yard to it's final home on the side of the house.  It messed with the girls heads again - so they were ALL sleeping on the floor.  Thank goodness.  Hopefully, Drama will get a break from being a poop catcher.  They were getting very aggravated with us - we didn't get it moved until 9:15... 45 minutes past their bed time.

Here's the coop (before it moved to the side yard)...  (ignore the huge blue tarp behind the 2nd picture - that's the run and wood for it up on a saw horse)





And, here's the inside.  You can see Drama's roost down low, and my EE and RIR's roost up above.  I measured the "high" roost - it is only 16" and Drama still can't get up there.  At the very least, I'd like to get her on the low roost so she stays out of the poop zone.  I don't think it would be fair to completely remove the roost for the other two just because Drama can't get up there - or would it?

Beautiful coop. Did you build it?

 

[ByN8ureHomstead]

Quote:
Rain? its been so long since it rained here, but with this heat it would not make it to the ground.
You have obviously never seen Washington style rain ! !! ! !

When was the last time you felt Kansas heat. I am planning on taking one of our frying pans outside to see if I can fry an egg. I have been trying to work inside the RV but the temps staying around 120*.

 

[Ogress]

I'm so behind and I'm getting lost on all of this chemical talk. wow.

Can any of this 'prevention' be done organically? Just curious.

I was not going to use wormers on my flock initially; I figured our grandparents did not. Then one day I saw a bunch of little itty bitty squirming things in a fresh chicken poop. That big of a parasite load can't feel good for the Hen. My girls free range all the time, and I have a lot of lavender and garlic and other plants in natural wormers that they scratch around in, but it did not prevent them. I read they can pick up a lot of parasites from eating earthworms. My chickens love earthworms, andy yard is full of them! On days that I am turning the garden soil or compost heap and expose the worms, all the hens are flocked around me gobbling up the worms. Feel their crops when they roost those nights and they are all squishy full of earthworms!

 

[Farmin Momma]

I see no male hackle on this bird.
It looks like a pullet to me, has it crowed ?????????????

Well when it was about 10 wks old I thought it was trying to crow. It kept standing the way a roo does when one crows but it did not come out like a normal crow it was more of a weird perrrring. To this day he/she has not done it again. I thought maybe where the white feathers are on it's neck would be "his" hackle feathers because "he" did not have that coloring untill this past week. Was always just black. I guess we will see, it would be great if this is a hen.

 

[Teva]

I was not going to use wormers on my flock initially; I figured our grandparents did not. Then one day I saw a bunch of little itty bitty squirming things in a fresh chicken poop. That big of a parasite load can't feel good for the Hen. My girls free range all the time, and I have a lot of lavender and garlic and other plants in natural wormers that they scratch around in, but it did not prevent them. I read they can pick up a lot of parasites from eating earthworms. My chickens love earthworms, andy yard is full of them! On days that I am turning the garden soil or compost heap and expose the worms, all the hens are flocked around me gobbling up the worms. Feel their crops when they roost those nights and they are all squishy full of earthworms!

Good to know! Thanks Ogress.

 

[Zgoatlady]

I painted my toenails orange today and then put on my flip flops and went out into the yard. All my chickens ran over and attacked my toes!
They have never done this with any other color.

I have not been here in a whlile - busy putting in a foundation for a green house and digging a trench along the side of what used to be my lawn to try and drain it. Greenhouse came out great - my lot is sloped so we had a bit of digging to do to get it right. Drainage ditch looks okay, keeps the mud off my path to the chicken coop, but the former lawn is still a smelly swampy mess. I think I am going to turn it ont a pond. Will that be okay wih chickens roaming around it?

yes but you will also bring more wild life in toyour place with the pond. Which might not be to good for the chickens.
So how have you been Lady? I hope your doing 100% better.

 

[Zgoatlady]

Thanks for all the info on meds for the chickies. I am in the middle of compiling a common dosage chart for all these meds (since I have already had to look up dosages several different times all over BYC) so I have it handy out in the run with the meds. Today I brought out an unused 2 drawer file cabinet to the run and finally got all the meds and treats in one place and easily accessible

Once again I'm wondering if I have a sick chicken. Gah! Why does this keep happening? Maybe I over analyze everything, but Tilda, my GLW, was about to go in the coop for the night when suddenly she squirted clear liquid out her rear end. She has no other symptoms of being ill. I picked her up and checked out her vent and it's clean; she has no respiratory symptoms. She's been on the bleach solution water with everyone else now for 3 days.

FYI for the chicken meds make sure you bring them inside in the winter becasue when it gets cold some might not be able to handle it. I found out the hard way with lots of Goat meds lost a lot of money that way.

 

[Breshcandra]

Coolest part about CR's Silkiebator, is he never has to waite for her to go broody !
he just sticks her by a nest of eggs & she climbs on & does the deed !
I have no idea if that is the norm for Silkies, but it is so cool !

Wow mine don't do that. He is lucky.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote: Hey I get lots of freaky stuff. Got 2 LF crows one lays olive and the other a nice blue. Had a pink egger a while back too.

 

[itsren]

ETA- Did VF build this coop for you? This would make a great additional silkie coop for next spring if I want more!

No, I bought the coop from a guy in Enumclaw. He's a cabinet builder and he makes coops with the spare wood and sells them. It was unfinished, and required a lot of work to get it to a usable state, but it only cost $300. My husband said the wood on this coop was top grade and would have cost us close to that had we bought it ourselves. The craftmanship is absolutely pristine. It's obvious the guy does a beautiful job building cabinetry. He said he builds 2 coops a month and lists them on Craig's List. If you are interested, PM me, and I'll see if I can find his e-mail address. It is a lot of work to get it to the state we have ours in, but it was really worth it.

We had to make some modifications and finish it - it came unpainted and without any wire or roofing. We had to fill in nail holes, add some boards to enable us to attach hardware cloth on all the openings, cut the nest boxes bigger (because of Drama, our Light Brahma), move the roosts because they were both up top and way too close together (10" apart - perfect for silkies). We knew Drama might not be able to get up there, so I placed one lower and centered the other. We had to roof it and add roofing material to the ramp because our girls were not able to walk up the ramp. Last night I built a poop "board" using a wood frame and screen door material, and it worked great to keep the pine chips from falling through the slatted floor. A newspaper floor to keep the pine chips in wasn't working.

We painted 3 coats on it to make it easily washable. We had most of the paint, because the red is the trim color on the doors of our house and the white is trim from our house, too. We had to buy the high gloss white on the inside, so that was an extra expense. We had extra roofing from when my husband roofed our house, so it's kind of cool that the roof is exactly the same as our house and shed and didn't cost us anything extra. We did have to buy the latches and such, because I wanted lockable black latches. I'm guessing, by the time the coop was done, we probably put about $400 total into it. Not to shabby for a coop of that quality!

It was a lot of work, but we are very pleased how beautiful it turned out. The added bonus, when the neighbors saw it - they were smiling about it. Yay! Let me tell you, after all we went through, seeing pleased neighbors was the icing on the cake!