Sad Chickens
I must say, a molting chicken is not a beautiful thing. Some chickens molt a little more gracefully than others. I’ve had a few chickens and you can’t even tell when they molt, they must lose their feathers here and there and the new ones grow back quickly. Then there are other chickens, like Sandy, our poor Wyandotte lady.
This poor lady was in the thick of her molt when the weather was dipping down into the negative 20’s. Poor girl, she looked terrible, she hardly had a feather left on her. Luckily, by the time I took this photo her feathers were starting to grow back in. I almost brought her inside, but then I worried that would not be good for her. I did keep a close eye on her to make sure she wasn’t shivering. Lucky for her, she’s the favorite of Mr Rooster and has the prime roost spot right next to him. She snuggles up close to him every night, no doubt this helps keep her warm.
I’m glad her feathers are finally growing back in. She’s the most beautiful chicken in our flock, I’d love to hatch some of her eggs this coming year.
Have you ever seen a chicken in molt?
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Earning Their Keep
We’ve had a bit of a warmup here in Maine, it’s been in the 40’s the last couple days. I’m not complaining as the inch of ice finally is almost melted off the driveway. I’m not so happy to see the snow melt, it’s provides valuable protection for the garden during the winter. With this warm weather, the risk of predators also goes up. Thankfully, Tara is very aware of this as well.
She’s been patrolling the perimeters and is more alert than usual during the day. Yesterday she spent a lot of time standing on top of the tallest snowbank sniffing the air. Dexter has also been spending the days outside, hunting along the rocks walls in the gardens, rustling up his own meals of tasty little rodents.
The Sweets, our garage cat, is also working hard, though she’s nocturnal so I don’t see her very often. I have spotted her up under the chickens several times late at night when I take Tara out. Thankfully she’s keeping the mice out of the coop and away from all of our outbuildings. Working animals are very valuable when you have a place like ours. It’s great when you can use an animals natural instinct to help you out! They certainly make our lives much easier and do a great job with their appointed tasks.
Do you have any working animals, or have you been around working animals?
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It’s Official
I guess when I pull out all my seeds and start going through them the 2014 garden season has officially begun. This is what my coffee table looks like at the moment. I’m being ruthless about what seeds are getting sprouted for chickens and which ones I’m going to actually start this year. No doubt my seed order will be minimal this year in hopes of finally whittling down my seed stash.
I’m also going to be simplifying what I plant a little this year. There are loads of garden chores that need done, and I’d rather spend my time preparing new planting areas for future gardens than tending to a huge variety of vegetables. That’s my main goal for this garden year.
How do your goals for this garden year differ from the last?
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Wintertime Fun
Our driveway is slick, after the ice storm and several snow storms afterwards, it was pretty much a luge track. At one point, both of our cars were stuck at the bottom and Mr Chiots needed to get the filled gas cans in one of the cars. He rode a sled down and hauled the gas up on the sled. After using the gas to fill the plow truck, we were able to get the cars up the driveway. That gave him an idea though, use our 1/3 mile curvy driveway as a sledding hill – it’s PERFECT.
It sure makes for a long ride down with twists and turns which created a few spectacular crashes. The only problem is the LONG walk back up! Unfortunately we got a lot of rain yesterday that melted our sledding track, guess we’ll have to wait for more snow. At least we got a few good runs in while the conditions were great!
When was the last time you went sled riding?
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JINXED
Well, we did it – we jinxed ourselves. On our podcast on Sunday evening we were talking about how our chicken coop had barely escaped a HUGE branch that fell in the big ice storm. Monday morning when I went out to the coop I saw this:
Yep a big branch right through the side. At least it wasn’t too bad, I will still be able to open the door when the ice melts. We’ve been wanting to rebuild the run anyways, now it looks like that task is going to be moved to the top of the list. We’re considering a hoop house type structure instead of this wood framed one, we’ll see what ends up getting built.
Have you ever had any damage to property from storms?
