The worst kind of winter weather.

Christmas has come and gone, as has our strange late fall that felt more like spring. The turkeys of course, are still roosting in the trees over the rabbit hutches. Once the ice storm came they were less thrilled about it though, and have been reluctant to come down. I can't really blame them. If I didn't have reason to be outside I wouldn't be. Of course, with livestock we have reason to be outside.

We'll get to the snow shortly.

First, we are doing well, Christmas was lovely and many people were very generous to us and the Critter. We felt very fortunate, and feel extremely fortunate to have the friends both proximate, and connected through networked media. Thank you to everyone that reads this as we come in to the end of the year, and thanks especially to the Patreon patrons that have helped us significantly this year. That said, let's get on to what's occupying us right now. The weather.



Yep, that's all ice. It came down a mix of heavy snow, and ice pellets that shoveled like sand, and froze solid given half a chance. We shoveled what we could, but with the snowblower unable to do anything for this, this is about our worst case weather. Everything is under a solid glaze of ice, and walking safely anywhere is a joke. The car is parked at the bottom of the driveway for the time being. It's going to take a lot of sand to make this anything like safe to drive on. On the up side, I took time off from work combined with the holidays, I don't have to go anywhere 'till Friday!

That of course, as I mentioned doesn't mean I don't have to go outside. The Chickens aren't sure about the whole going outside part for the most part. The black chicken though, as usual as soon as we opened the hatch ran right out into the sleet and freezing rain, looking for and calling for her friends the turkeys. She may stay the night with the chickens, but she seems to be a turkey at heart. She braved the elements, got up on the poles holding up the fence around the run, and despite clear difficulty with the wind, rain, and discomfort went looking for the turkeys, calling away. Eventually she found them, and they did come down out of their tree, though the big black tom came down with great reluctance. As you can see, she sticks close to them as much as she can even when it means wandering around on ice. Our major concern with the poultry in this weather is keeping water liquid. That means taking multiple trips when there isn't melt. When there is melt, things are easier, the liquid water stays liquid, and there is a lot of liquid for them to find if they are so motivated to do so. Yesterday in the worst of the storm the poultry as a whole barely ate anything, and can't have gotten much liquid.
Today, we made sure they got food and water.The good part about poultry for us besides the entertainment and the eggs is, when we mess up and food goes off, it doesn't go to waste. We don't have as much food waste as we did a few years ago now that we're paying attention to trying to limit it, but it still happens. On days like today after being out of the house a lot for over a week, we had a bit, and that was just what the poultry wanted. It wasn't worth going anywhere to get to pellets despite them  being nutritionally balanced. Warm veggies and leftover chunks of meat and fruit, that's worth it. Even with all that though, we had to bring pellets and water to Boris and a pair of the red hens who refuse under any circumstance to come out of the coop. They might have the right idea to be fair.