Washingtonians

[itsren]

Quote:
Thanks.

DH finally found the screech. He found a bald eagle screech that sounded exactly like it. Man, when I was out there and it got so quiet, then the screeches between the two trees - whew... that was eerie!
Baldies are most commonly a kind of high pitched chatter. Speaking of the other day we had a pair teaching a juvie to fly/hunt right over our house. DW and I stood there watching for quite a while. Such a beautiful sight!

They are gorgeous.

What else would make a call similar to "Bald Eagle Sound 5" at this website? http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Bald_Eagle_Sounds

 

[itsren]

Hey it's a matter of who can pass up a free chicken dinner !!!!

I feel surrounded!

 

[TerrorBird]

Quote:
Tell me about it! We've got Red-tailed and Coopers hawks, and once we even spied a baby eagle (complete with remnants of head fuzz) sitting in a large dead tree! None of our chickens are truly safe!

 

[hallerlake]

I'm grateful I can look into the outside brooder from the laundry room. It keeps me from worrying too much about the chickies on their first night out.

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote:
Tell me about it! We've got Red-tailed and Coopers hawks, and once we even spied a baby eagle (complete with remnants of head fuzz) sitting in a large dead tree! None of our chickens are truly safe!
See and given where I live this is why my birds don't free range and ALL of my runs are covered with wire or net.

 

[Justahannah]

Quote: 5 tons of poop sounds like way too much work! I moved 10 yards of Tagro (Tacoma's sewage lawn amendment stuff) earlier this summer, and I imagine it felt (and probably smelled!) about like that...not something I ever want to do again. How many chickens do you have? I just have 5 girls so this is on a really small scale...in the coop I scoop the poop board daily (I think ten days of not doing that and it would reach the roosts!) so it's very clean where they're sleeping, and am just doing the litter in the run (4' x 12'). I never even considered taking it all out at once, I've been looking at it with the hopes it will work as a revolving system. Once I get it built up a bit, I'll start removing it at the same rate I'm stirring fresh in and since it doesn't smell hot I'll see how it does in my garden and on my flowerbeds.

 

[TerrorBird]

Quote:
Tell me about it! We've got Red-tailed and Coopers hawks, and once we even spied a baby eagle (complete with remnants of head fuzz) sitting in a large dead tree! None of our chickens are truly safe!
See and given where I live this is why my birds don't free range and ALL of my runs are covered with wire or net.

I understand completely. I talked to a friend's mom the other day and asked about her young birds. Of the twenty she started with, twelve were killed by hawks and coyotes. They don't keep their birds confined at all. They can run under cars or into a few small patches of vegetation, but that's pretty much the only cover they get. It makes me sad to think that her birds are always in constant danger.

 

[itsren]

Quote:
Tell me about it! We've got Red-tailed and Coopers hawks, and once we even spied a baby eagle (complete with remnants of head fuzz) sitting in a large dead tree! None of our chickens are truly safe!
See and given where I live this is why my birds don't free range and ALL of my runs are covered with wire or net.

I understand completely. I talked to a friend's mom the other day and asked about her young birds. Of the twenty she started with, twelve were killed by hawks and coyotes. They don't keep their birds confined at all. They can run under cars or into a few small patches of vegetation, but that's pretty much the only cover they get. It makes me sad to think that her birds are always in constant danger.

Oh, how sad about those birds!

I have been looking at bird aviaries. I wonder what DH is going to say if I ask "Hey honey, can we turn our entire back yard into an aviary?" LOL. Not that I'm totally crazy enough to do this, but, then again...

What do you guys think... would something like this batting cage be enough to keep hawks, eagles, etc. away from my girls? http://gourock.com/battingcage_home.html

I wonder if I could sell enough crapola from around the house to pay for something like that. But, I'd only want to spend that kind of money on it if it was believed that it could work.

Edited to add: This would JUST be to replace free-ranging, when I am at home supervising them, during daylight hours. When I am gone, or at night, they are always locked in their coop/run set-up.

 

[itsren]

5 tons of poop sounds like way too much work! I moved 10 yards of Tagro (Tacoma's sewage lawn amendment stuff) earlier this summer, and I imagine it felt (and probably smelled!) about like that...not something I ever want to do again. How many chickens do you have? I just have 5 girls so this is on a really small scale...in the coop I scoop the poop board daily (I think ten days of not doing that and it would reach the roosts!) so it's very clean where they're sleeping, and am just doing the litter in the run (4' x 12'). I never even considered taking it all out at once, I've been looking at it with the hopes it will work as a revolving system. Once I get it built up a bit, I'll start removing it at the same rate I'm stirring fresh in and since it doesn't smell hot I'll see how it does in my garden and on my flowerbeds.

Does Tagro smell pretty bad? My garden club got off on a Tagro kick, and I *almost* jumped on the band-wagon with them. But, I just couldn't bring myself to amending my soil with composted human waste. Animal poop - I'm all over that - but the human kind...

 

[itsren]

Well, I'm going to try and get another hour of shut-eye. I woke up to the sound of critters in my house.

Took a while for it to dawn on me that the critters were little tiny tweets pecking on the glass of their brooder.

Speaking of tweets.... Latte, my little yellow one, is feathering in black with white mixed in. It is not what I expected out of a yellow chick.
Drama was yellow and she's now white - which is what I was expecting Latte to do. Latte's feathering so far is looking like Cocoa and Rocha's.

I took each chick out of the brooder yesterday and held them up under regular lighting. The red light changes their coloring. Blackie has a chocolate brown head with black body. Cocoa and Rocha are chocolate brown, not dark grey like I thought they were. Under normal lighting, their baby fuzz is a very pretty color.