Animals weathering the deep freeze
Sometimes, I think that
humans would be 100% happier if we were 25% dumber. I woke at 4:30 on
Thursday morning, worried about what the deep freeze would do to our
animals, but when the day finally dawned at a chilly 1 degree
Fahrenheit, the animals were happy as can be. Lucy seems to become
bouncier the colder it gets, the goats were waiting at the gate for
their breakfast, and the ducks ran straight out the door and into the
creek, where flowing water must have felt like a sauna at 31 degrees
warmer than the air.
I heated everyone's
morning drinking water, but only the tractored hens seemed particularly
interested. They were also the only ones who ran to the lunchtime waterer
I brought out to refresh their now-frozen morning offering. I guess
everyone else was too busy exploring the frozen world to want fresh
water.
Our
goats seemed more interested in the sorghum seed head that I treated
them too --- a rare bit of grain for a cold day. Perhaps I should have
brought two heads, but Artemesia seems to hold her own nowadays. Our
larger goat inevitably head-butts the smaller goat when they're supposed
to be sharing, but Artemesia simply ignores the jab in the ribs and
keeps eating away. In fact, this time around, Artemesia got the lion's
share of the treat since Abigail was too busy fighting to chow down.
Maybe there's a lesson there? The sweetest goat gets the grain?
Stay warm out there!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Animals are tough and adaptable. Being from the 45th parallel in God's Country (Minnesota) growing up on a homestead there, we kept the chickens inside in the winter but they could venture out in the snowy pen if they wanted. The wooly sheep and cattle did fine as long as they had shelter from the wind, and ample hay and water.
The worst part I recall was hauling water. Our little barn had no water piped to it, as one had to bury pipes 4-6 feet deep which would have been thousands in backhoe work. In the summer we had a hose and pipe arrangement from an exterior spigot on the house about 100 yards away, but in winter the exterior faucets were drained.
I had to fill five gallon buckets with hot water in the basement shower stall and carry them up the stairs and out to the barn. Hot water so it would not freeze too fast as we often had days of sub zero temps.
I survived, and it makes for great stories as an adult!