There was good news and bad news on Planet Chicken when I released our three hens from their coop at 7 a.m. today.
The bad news took several forms.
It was 6 degrees below zero when I got up at 5 to walk the dogs. That was bad enough, but the temperature had dropped another degree by the time I headed out to the coop two hours later.
I don’t know what the wind chill was at 7 a.m., but heavy winds had been forecast overnight, and the evidence showed that those predictions had come true. The tarps I had placed along both sides of the pen yesterday afternoon, to shield the hens from the wind, had blown loose at their bottom edge during the night.
So I had to kick about a dozen dislodged and frozen bricks this morning, to break them free from the ground, and then realign them along the base of the tarps.
Of course, the good news outweighed the bad . . . by a long shot. When I opened the coop’s door, I immediately discovered that “the girls” had not been transformed into chickcicles.
Nellie and Snow descended the ramp into the pen, followed a little while later by Hope, after I tapped her right wing to get her down from the roost. They were none the worse for wear, although they retreated into the coop after a short stay outdoors. I rarely place feed and water bowls in the coop, partly because of the risk that the hens may topple the water bowl and saturate their bedding, but if every rule is made to be broken, this was the day to do just that. Both bowls quickly found their way inside.
Even after more than four years of keeping chickens, I still worry about how our hens will fare in extreme cold. That’s just what I was doing yesterday afternoon when I spotted a chickadee visiting a backyard feeder. One of these tiny creatures weighs no more than half an ounce, according to allaboutbirds.org, and yet chickadees and other wild birds survive plummeting temps and heavy winds and other wintry indignities.
Last night, the hens did so as well.
The bad news took several forms.
It was 6 degrees below zero when I got up at 5 to walk the dogs. That was bad enough, but the temperature had dropped another degree by the time I headed out to the coop two hours later.
I don’t know what the wind chill was at 7 a.m., but heavy winds had been forecast overnight, and the evidence showed that those predictions had come true. The tarps I had placed along both sides of the pen yesterday afternoon, to shield the hens from the wind, had blown loose at their bottom edge during the night.
So I had to kick about a dozen dislodged and frozen bricks this morning, to break them free from the ground, and then realign them along the base of the tarps.
Of course, the good news outweighed the bad . . . by a long shot. When I opened the coop’s door, I immediately discovered that “the girls” had not been transformed into chickcicles.
Nellie and Snow descended the ramp into the pen, followed a little while later by Hope, after I tapped her right wing to get her down from the roost. They were none the worse for wear, although they retreated into the coop after a short stay outdoors. I rarely place feed and water bowls in the coop, partly because of the risk that the hens may topple the water bowl and saturate their bedding, but if every rule is made to be broken, this was the day to do just that. Both bowls quickly found their way inside.
Even after more than four years of keeping chickens, I still worry about how our hens will fare in extreme cold. That’s just what I was doing yesterday afternoon when I spotted a chickadee visiting a backyard feeder. One of these tiny creatures weighs no more than half an ounce, according to allaboutbirds.org, and yet chickadees and other wild birds survive plummeting temps and heavy winds and other wintry indignities.
Last night, the hens did so as well.
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