Even though it was 76° when I came home today, we are in the midst of winter and the late nights and early mornings can still be quite frigid.  Sue told me that, when she went to feed the goats this morning, the whole back pastures were frosted over… that makes for a cold night!  The chicken-littles are still in the Chickshaw right now, that means that its mostly an open coop~ certainly open on the bottom ~we did staple wind barriers on the open sides because there were some ridiculously cold and gusty winds.  We think we lost one chicken due to exposure and we had to bring in one of the littler Buff Orpingtons who was having some difficulty eating due to the cold – we think.  So, we decided to take some winter feeding steps to make sure that none of the others had undue cold stress symptoms. Now, every night before it’s time to go in for the night, we create a FEEDING FRENZY by making up a hot chicken mash for them.  They completely devour the mash. What you can’t see is the black feed dish in the midst of that scrum of chickens.  Eating the warm mash helps to warm them up, fill up their crops for overnight digestion, giving them lots of fuel to keep their body temps up over night.  Then, we do it again in the morning when they get let out… giving them a boost for the cold mornings.  We’re hoping that the coop will be completed tomorrow and that we can work on moving the littles in over the weekend.  Stay tuned for that big adventure!
Until then,
as always,
Thanks for reading!

Today’s weather: Warm and beautiful!  The high according to the phone was 64° today!  But as stated earlier, it showed warmer than that on our indoor/outdoor thermometer at home.  Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be the same, nice and warm and sunny.  Sue reported that the wind in the morning was quite biting – otherwise it was a nice day.

Egg Report: 2 eggs today, we’ve been averaging 2 eggs every other day, on the “other” days we usually pick up 4.  I’m going to try to keep track of that, either here or on our FB Page… more for my information that yours, but I like sharing 🙂  Tootles.