We had a little over two feet of snow from the blizzard and had a lot of digging out to do on Sunday. Luckily Alan bought a big snow blower with the plan of digging paths back to the animals. The tractor he has been plowing with just doesn't do well on our steep hills so the blower was to replace that. The snow blower worked great. I have paths just about everywhere!
The snow blower also did a great job clearing the drive up to the barn and our driveway. Alan thinks his plow would not have been able to deal with this much snow. Unfortunately, the snow blower can't get into the chicken pen to clear that out.
This chicken usually jumps the fence every morning and spends the day scratching around outside. She jumped up onto the snow, squawked a whole lot, then spent about an hour sitting on the fence. She never did leave the pen.
The chickens and ducks were much happier when they could get around a bit.
The rams weathered the storm well in their huts. They have made a path down to the gate but haven't ventured beyond. I shoveled them a big circle to hang out in outside their hut and they've been getting extra hay. The ewes only know that the edges of their outside pen have snow; other than that they seem unaffected by the blizzard.
The worst faring animals in the snow were our barn cats. A few hours before the blizzard wound down one of our barn cats was spooked and ran up into the woods. He was having a very hard time getting through the two feet of snow but wouldn't turn around. We tried to find him but between the steep slope, the thicket of brush he ran through and the deep snow we just couldn't follow him. We didn't see him at all yesterday either, but this morning he was back! Other than being hungry he doesn't seem any worse for the experience, and his brother seems much calmer now that his brother is back.
Now we just have to hope the snow melts off the roof soon.
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