Cold chicken feet

 We moved the hens out to their summer pasture in the apple orchard last Monday night. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Terry spent several days before the transfer putting mulch around all the apple trees, in spite of the fact that the hens would systematically kick it all over the place as soon as they took residency.

The de-mulching of the trees is great fun to watch, chickens flinging wood chips and pecking at the morsels revealed underneath. I wanted to get some pictures but ran into the same problem all observers encounter when watching something/someone. The behavior of the observed may be influenced by the presence of the observer. It has some fancy scientific name like “the observer effect.” In this case, the presence of the observer causes the chickens to run to the gate, clucking, “Treats? Treats? Treats?”

The observer effect: Drop everything! Someone's coming!

I waited in the orchard for the hens to give up on getting scratch grains and go on about their usual business. It was only partially successful. I was not able to capture full-blown flinging. This is the best I could do.

Kick to the right

See what's down there. Kick some more.

Do-si-do

Change partners

Then it got cold. Really cold for this time of year. The temperature dipped below freezing, but for two mornings, I could chip the ice off the outside waterer and carry on. Friday morning (I think) it was 27°F, and the water trough was frozen solid. Even the nipple waterer in the coop had ice in it. I brought the outside waterer in the house, let it melt, and filled it at the laundry sink. Then I had to schlep it back to the orchard with a gallon and a half of water in it. Since then, I have brought the waterer in when I close the coop so it will be ready for filling in the morning. It will be nice when we can use the hoses again.

The wind blew hard. The poor hens huddled together under a bare apple tree “like penguins,” Terry said. He was fascinated that they would behave like this. In the winter run, they spend windy days in the coop or in the shelter of a covered dog kennel in the run. Coop 2, the summer coop, is half the size of Coop 1. It is only for sleeping and laying eggs. Normally, the hens are perfectly happy spending their days outside. Apparently, they don’t like to spend time in Coop 2 during the day even to get out of the biting wind. I could drag the kennel down to the orchard, but it would kill yet another patch of grass and be hard to mow around. It will get warm soon. I hope.

I looked out the window this morning and said, “The girls are not going to like this!”

6:00 a.m. this morning

Terry was just getting out of bed. “Is it cold again?”

He looked out the window. “Oh! We must have two inches of snow! We were only supposed to get a dusting.”

The girls do not like to walk in the snow. When I opened the coop door, they looked out in surprise instead of flying out to the grass. Blackbeard took two tentative steps onto the ramp….

Damn! It's cold out here!

Then turned around and went back in.

Enough of that shit.

We are not going out.

I'm not going out. Are you going out? 

We really mean it.

In fact, we're going to cower in the farthest corner from the door.

So I left them. By the time I got in the house, half the flock was at the waterer and/or wandering around in my footprints, where the snow was not so deep. I went back out and scraped some snow aside with my boot. A scoop of scratch grains got everyone out so I could fill the feeder and clean the bedding a little.

I knew from the forecast that it was too much to ask for sunshine. It wasn’t all that cold, yet the snow hung around until early afternoon. Not a good day to be a chicken.