Washingtonians

[FirewifeJess]

JustBugged - you're nuts! Glad you rescued those animals though
Renee- yay! you're back! I'm keeping Dartha. We're working with her or keeping her locked up when kids are out. I think the noise of the kids bothers her. Makes a lot of sense. Bothers me too.

Plus I'm getting 2 more laying hens on Fri/Sat!!!!!!!


So I just finished prepping for our first 2 weeks of home schooling for both John and Jeanine. She's gonna be crazy into what we're doing, even if some of it is over her head a little, so I included her in every acitivity. Should be super fun, will report back tomorrow afternoon whenever we finish.

 

[justbugged]

Well I am about to feed the fish, and put the nasty little dogs to bed in their crates. I'm going to put me into bed too, because morning comes and the puppies all want to go play. I doesn'thurt that I am falling asleep either.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote: Wow, you must really hate Halloween, CR! All those spiders and bats everywhere!

No not really as long as they stay out of my space we are OK! And the ones at halloween are mostly fake.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Well I shouldn't be allowed to go to the auction by myself. I ended up bring home 15 rabbits, 2 Australian Diamond doves. 2 Java Rice finches, and 6 chickens (I think that one may be a roo

).

I spent yesterday, working on a little shed/play house. The shed is now a quarantine pen for the chickens. I am using my 4'x4' brooder pen for 12 of the bunnies. The breeding pair of Chinchilla rabbits came with a divided cage,so they have semi private accommodations. Today I have been able to get a double breeders cage cleaned up. I bought the cage on craigslist a couple years ago.I had hoped that it would work with the small finches, but the bars of the cage are to wide for the small birds. I am hoping that the cages will work much better for some of the smaller bunnies.

In the mean time all but one of the bunnies are in my front yard. The other bunny is now named Harvey, and is living in my living room. He is a Flemish Giant, and is bigger than all the Yorkies. So far the dogs seem to understand that Harvey can kick their behinds. I have given Harvey a litter box, and so far so good. I am really hoping that I will finally have an indoor bunny. Of course it doesn't hurt that I really love Flemish Giants too.

The prices at the auction were really low due to the volume of animals. The auction house was closed last weekend because the the holiday. So this week was it was much bigger than normal. I am hoping that I will be able to re-sell some of the bunnies in the next couple of weeks.

I now just need a little more energy in order to get everything done. I have been over doing things, and I am again paying for it. Still the critters keep me moving, and give me something that I have to do daily.

What auction did ya go to ???

DANG IT JIM ! ! ! ! 3:29am I hear rain !

 

[Chicken Rustler]

From what I can see I think that is one of them there chickenz !

Silly boy why would a chicken lady be holding a possum???

Unless maybe she catched it trying to get a chicken dinner.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Hi all!

Just got back from Oregon for the weekend. We went down to celebrate grandparent's day with my mom. We had a good time. I now have a little boy with black eye though (sigh). My little boy, his twin sister, a misguided foot and a bounce house didn't make for a good ending to the day. My poor little man!

I got home, went out to pull the eggs. We had an extra egg. So, I'm not sure if I'm should be excited or disappointed. The 2nd egg was a light brown egg. I don't know if Drama is old enough to lay eggs yet or not. She's 21 weeks. Both Drama and Caunnie are squatting, so, theoretically, that egg *could* be Drama's, but I'm not holding out hope. DH said to just be happy to have another layer. He's probably right. But, if that egg belongs to Caunnie, I can't help but feel a little bit slighted that my EE is throwing brown eggs.

I have had some start laying as early as 17 weeks and have had others that were closer to 28-30 weeks. Keep in mind our chickens don't always read the same books we do. Therefore sometimes they don't do things the way we expect they should!

Brown eggs from an EE?? I hate to tell ya this but that is why they are called EE because they lay colored eggs. It's just that we never know what color we will get. I just had 8 chicks chase me home from Wilco. I am hoping the 4 pollo loco will give me some of my long sought after chocolate eggs and the 4 Ameracauna (come on people they are feed store/hatchery birds, EE's) will lay some nice pink and one purple egg. OK reality check I will be happy as long as they don't lay white eggs. Those are prohibited here. And I would prefer not brown, already have enough of those.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Well I am about to feed the fish, and put the nasty little dogs to bed in their crates. I'm going to put me into bed too, because morning comes and the puppies all want to go play. I doesn'thurt that I am falling asleep either.

Is Jet responsible to make sure you get secured in your crate!!!

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Well I see the night crew was doing pretty good at keeping things going here. And then once again along comes the masked man and scares everybody off !!! Geeeez Leweeeez ya'all is kind to give a feller a complex ya know.


Hey I wonder when / if we will get a report of results from the P up fair ?? Sounds like there was a good bunch for the TT Serama show.

OK since it looks like I have killed the thread I am gonna have to make a big choice. Try to go back to sleep for a couple hours or go to work at the stables. Maybe I will just try for sleep and if that doesn't happen by 4:30 I will go to work!

Oh Oh Oh BTW

Welcome to any new peeps.

 

[itsren]

WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I bet it's Drama's! It doesn't look to be the norm, but I found this thread here that says one gal's light brahma started laying at 21 weeks. Drama looks like this doesn't she?
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/391098/when-do-light-brahmas-start-laying#post_4736365

I sure hope so! Yep! Drama looks very similar. Her face is a bit different, but Drama is redder than that and has been squatting for a couple of weeks.

 

[itsren]

Renee- yay! you're back! I'm keeping Dartha. We're working with her or keeping her locked up when kids are out. I think the noise of the kids bothers her. Makes a lot of sense. Bothers me too.

Plus I'm getting 2 more laying hens on Fri/Sat!!!!!!

I'm glad to hear that. I think if you work with Dartha and keep the kids away from her when they're out and about playing on their own, Dartha will probably be fine. Any time (if) you see aggressive behavior at all, hold her upside down. Rhodie has calmed down quite a bit since her first time from seeing the world from a different perspective. She has her moments - and in those moments, she quickly finds out that I'm in control, not her. After she started laying, I was afraid to turn her upside down for fear that would mess up her laying. Then, one day she bit me twice - hard - and I didn't care about the eggs at all. She went upside down twice that day - and still laid an egg the next morning. Turn her upside down gently, stand still holding her so a walking movement doesn't freak her out. Keep her upside down until she's completely calm. It seems to work!

Did I understand correctly that you haven't actually seen aggressive behavior with Dartha? I wonder if the kids are antagonizing the birds and Dartha is reacting. When Bob and I talked, he mentioned that he had to ask Jeanine quite a few times to keep her fingers out of the cages at the fair. He said he kept telling her "if you put your fingers in there, the birds will peck you". He told me that he was worried about her, because she kept poking at the birds in the cages, many of them were roosters - and he knows roosters can be mean. I caught her doing that a couple of times and asked her not to, but I didn't realize Bob was warning her about them, too.

She and William are so tiny. The birds probably shouldn't be out if they are playing outside unsupervised. Both of them are easy targets for the birds to jump up at.

My kids are 10 and 8, are still supervised around my trio, and I've still had issues. The soccer ball that resulted in Caunnie's beak being broken... I was about 10 feet from my youngest son when he kicked that. It happened too fast for me to react. Kids are kids - they don't always realize the ramifications of what they are doing. My son had no intentions of kicking a ball toward the birds. He meant to kick it the other way - he just had a very bad shot. We had to make a rule of no balls, at all, anywhere within the vicinity of the chickens.