Frozen Chicken
We got snow in Seattle last night, in the usual on-again off-again, is-it-going-to-stick-or-is-it-just-going-to-tease-us fashion. It was looking pretty slushy when we went to bed, but I woke up early in the morning and peeked out the window, just like I used to do when I was a kid, to discover a decent snowfall had stuck around, and even covered the road. But this post isn’t just about the snow, it is about chickens in the snow.
I was really curious how they would do in freezing cold weather. When I was researching heat lamps for them online, I read about people in Indiana and other ridiculously cold winter climates who didn’t feel the need to heat their coops, so I backed off my initial plans of supplying the ladies with a warm red light on all night for them. Anyway, they all snuggle together to sleep, and they can also puff up their feathers to make a nice downy layer of insulation.
This morning when I let them out of their coop they ran right through the snow to their bowl of food, but that didn’t last long. A half an hour later I looked out and they were nowhere in sight — they were back in the chicken house where it was, if not warm, at least not freezing cold on their toes (feet? talons? claws?) I didn’t see them outside all day, even after the snow melted back a little bit. So today the chickens and the humans ended up sticking to the same plan — hang out in the house and wait for things to get back to normal outside.
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