The Day After

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.

Snow...Finally!

This winter has been incredibly warm, but I like a bit of snow. The weather forecasters have been all over the place with this storm's predicted snowfall. We started with the first flakes around 7 last night. When I went out this morning to feed this is what met me at the patio door.

That's an open door. We had about 10-12 inches already on the ground when I was feeding. And we really need to get some weather stripping for the bottom of the big barn doors. There were two foot tall drifts in the barn from snow blowing in under the doors. The wind is the big problem. By the time I walked back to the house from feeding I could barely see my foot prints. Many snow drifts were over my knees. Now the forecasters are saying we will get a total of 23-30 inches.

Yesterday was spent getting the animals as ready as they could be for the storm. The barn overhang we had built last spring is a lifesaver. No longer must I shovel out in front of the doors to get them open so the sheep can go out. I fenced in the area directly under the overhang after we had all the wet weather. We were starting to get hoof problems with all the mud. Now the ewes are walking around in dry straw and discarded hay.

The rams are hanging out in their shelters this morning. Yesterday I moved one of the calf hutches so it would block the northeast side of the shelter, where the wind was supposed to be coming from during the storm. They have been hanging out in both the calf hutch and the shelter and staying cozy. Extra hay this morning for them!

The chickens are probably the most miserable. Usually they hang out under their coop but the snow has blown under there and they aren't too thrilled about staying inside the coop.

The kittens are happily ensconced in the barn, with all the food and water they need/want. And the birds are chowing down at the feeders, making for some very interesting kitty television.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Here is my obligatory "Boy is it cold outside" post.
At 2:30 PM today the temp sat at a balmy 18 degrees fahrenheit.

The lows have been in the single digits overnight and we are about as prepared as we could be.  I bought a heated bucket to keep at least one of the sheeps' water buckets unfrozen. I have another on back order. These are the greatest and I wonder why I never had one before now. Oh yeah, something about the directions saying not to use it outside. Since this is my first winter with a barn this is really the first time I could use one.  Now I can't wait for the second heated bucket to come.

The sheep are snug in their barn. Of course they are eating a ton of hay to keep their rumens working to make heat. And, thankfully, no one has lambed yet. Those lambs are a lot warmer inside their moms than they would be outside.  But we are ready for lambing as well. We have two heat lamps, extra bulbs and our lambing kit ready to go. It would be nice if they would wait until it's not so frigid outside.

Inside, our wood stove has been burning nonstop for a few days. Alan has been getting up in the middle of the night to add more wood. It's nice to wake up to a warm house. Of course our bedroom is about 50 degrees at night since we have to keep the door shut to keep the cats out and there is no insulation in the outside wall.  But that's nothing an extra quilt and burrowing under the covers won't fix.