This week, like most everyone in the US, we battled the dramatic winter weather. Our saga began on Sunday.
We had made some preparations on Saturday evening - mainly, my cousin stapled towels over the screen windows of the new chicken coop. We hoped that would keep our hens warm enough that they could survive the cold.
On Sunday morning, with snow everywhere and the temperature threatening to fall below zero, our goats were surly. Goats hate getting their hooves wet, and they complained loudly - glaring at us from the relative warmth of their shelter which they refused to leave.
Our chickens also refused to leave their coops. We opened only one of the doors to the new flock’s coop - hoping to keep some warmth inside.
The old flock has only one door to begin with, so we propped it partially open to try to conserve heat.
We moved all the goat food tubs into the shelters so they wouldn't have to leave their shelters for food. That was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how to keep water available for everyone all day. It was so cold that the water buckets, which hold several gallons of water each, were freezing in a matter of an hour or two.
In December and January the water buckets are often frozen in the morning when we do the first feeding of the day. But, the sun is so potent here that we’re usually able to set the frozen buckets where the sun will hit them, and by afternoon those buckets are thawed. We have several spare sets of buckets, and we just fill a new set while we’re waiting for the old set to melt.
But, on Sunday, this was not going to work. So, once we’d fed everyone, and the hay cart was empty, we loaded it back up with frozen buckets, and hauled them all back to the house, where we set them in the bathtub to thaw.
Hauling the hay cart through the snow was an event. Normally, when it’s loaded with hay, it weighs around eighty pounds. An alfalfa bale averages sixty pounds, and the cart itself weighs about twenty. But, filled with frozen buckets, the hay cart weighed closer to 150 pounds. “A pint’s a pound the world around”. Five gallons of water weighs forty pounds.
Our land is not level. It has a lot of holes where dogs have dug for treasure and chickens have scratched for grubs. In other words, it takes muscle to pull that cart in the most ideal of circumstances. With several inches of snow on the ground and full of buckets, the only way I could pull the hay cart was either to have Jan push the back of it while I pulled, or to sing “Anatevka” as I heaved it over the frozen ground.
We made several trips throughout the day, bringing fresh buckets of liquid water to the animals, carrying frozen buckets back to the house to melt. We really didn’t get much else done the entire day, other than bucket hauling.
On the other hand, there were a lot of really delightful animal events on that first day of the arctic event. We noticed a cat cuddling with a chicken in one of our feral cat shelters:
Another chicken took refuge in one of the goat shelters. Those shelters are amazingly warm when filled with a bunch of hot goats. That chicken has been laying eggs in the goat shelter ever since.
The beings who enjoyed our frigid Sunday the most were the herd-guardian dogs, Clark and Vera. It’s hard to see, but these dogs had a sprinkling of snow all over their coats, and they loved it.
By late Monday, we thought we were going to return to our normal high desert climate. At 5:15 Tuesday morning, Jan texted me, “It’s pouring snow!”
This time, we decided to use the snow to our advantage. Three of our pregnant does had not yet gotten their vaccine and supplement injections. Maria, Elena, and Bella are first time mothers who are a little skittish - hard to catch, hard to get on the milking stand. But, on Tuesday, no one wanted to leave their shelters, so catching them was not an issue.
We gave them their shots, and since they were already on the milking stand, Jan trimmed their hooves, which turned out to be brilliant, because their hooves were soft from the snow and mud - easy to trim.
On Wednesday we thought we were finally back to our familiar weather, and I went to the Tractor Supply to get 300 pounds of feed for our animals. The man who brought the bags out to the parking lot asked how our animals were faring. It was great to get to report that our animals were all fine - keeping warm, watered, and fed. Many people in the goat community have does who have already kidded, and they’ve had to bring the kids into their homes - it’s too cold for the babies to survive outdoors.
In the afternoon there was an insane blizzard. Thursday morning we got a text that I-25 was one solid sheet of ice.
But we have electricity. And we have water. And heat, and food. So, I count us as lucky.
In the midst of all this, Miraculous Mothra has increased her milk production by nearly two pounds a day. In December, she was giving between three and four pounds of milk every day. Now she’s over five pounds every day - often by quite a bit. I don’t know if it’s the increase in light every day, or what.
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