Prepping for winter part 2

The last couple of days have been beautiful here. Let's see how much I got done on the winter vacation to do list...

1) Another bucket feeder for our chickens. We don't ferment the food in the winter and this will hold a couple of days worth of food.
2) Another automatic coop door for the secondary coop (currently housing our friend's chickens while she is in temporary housing)
I have the door done and it works inside the house but every time I install it outside it doesn't work. To top things off, I think our motor burnt out tonight. The door didn't trigger the lower limit switch for some reason and bounced back up and sat trying to turn when it was at the top of the frame for an hour (we weren't home). I'm going to test it tomorrow and might need to switch out the motor. Hopefully it's just the motor, I have 2 extra of those. I'm worried it's the power board though. That will cost me another $10. :/
3) Figure out how to keep the hose from freezing for the horses water. Currently I fill their tank completely full before a freeze and during the freeze they have enough water (thanks to a tank heater) to last until it's warm enough to defrost the hose again. Problem is you have to dig the hose out from under any snow so it can get sunlight. No big deal if you are living here but when someone is only coming once every 2 days they need water right then. A heated hose is an option but expensive ($80 for 20'). After looking online for suggestions, I've decided to run our hose up over a post that is between the tank and the pump and get a quick disconnect for the hose. This way it will be easy to disconnect the hose from the pump and the water will all drain out on it's own.
4) Setup a heated bowl for the goats. Luckily they don't drink much so the 1 1/2 gallon bowl that's on it's way should be enough.
5) Get a small hay bale for the goats. That should last them all week so they'll only need watered.
I won't have to get the hay bale for the goats until just before we leave. 

Overall I got quite a bit done recently. :)

Web Cams

I got the web cams up and running. 


Here is the chicken cam  and the puppy cam. (sorry puppy cam is done for now)
Enjoy!

You will be prompted for a username and password. Both are "guest". 

Prepping for winter

I've already written about what we do with the animals in winter but as we are coming up on a vacation I've been thinking about how to make things easiest for a sitter. Here are the projects that need to be done before we leave:

1) Another bucket feeder for our chickens. We don't ferment the food in the winter and this will hold a couple of days worth of food.
2) Another automatic coop door for the secondary coop (currently housing our friend's chickens while she is in temporary housing)
3) Figure out how to keep the hose from freezing for the horses water. Currently I fill their tank completely full before a freeze and during the freeze they have enough water (thanks to a tank heater) to last until it's warm enough to defrost the hose again. Problem is you have to dig the hose out from under any snow so it can get sunlight. No big deal if you are living here but when someone is only coming once every 2 days they need water right then. A heated hose is an option but expensive ($80 for 20'). After looking online for suggestions, I've decided to run our hose up over a post that is between the tank and the pump and get a quick disconnect for the hose. This way it will be easy to disconnect the hose from the pump and the water will all drain out on it's own.
4) Setup a heated bowl for the goats. Luckily they don't drink much so the 1 1/2 gallon bowl that's on it's way should be enough.
5) Get a small hay bale for the goats. That should last them all week so they'll only need watered.

With this setup if the dogs aren't here we would only need someone to come by every other day. It's the dogs that would require daily attention. This vacation we have had a friend graciously offer to stay out our house since she'll be off work that week, but the next vacation we won't have that option. We have a fellow farmer in the same town that is interested in trading services. That would be ideal so we don't have to spend a ton of money having someone come over. Hopefully we can find a house or two for the dogs so they won't have to come over every day and the dogs would have more company than just a 10  min visit.

Got to get to work!

Animals in the winter

Winter is here!

Ok, not technically, but we went from beautiful fall days of 68-70 degrees to below freezing temps in one day so it feels like winter is here!

A lot of discussion has been happening on the BYC forum about chickens and cold weather. I figured I'd write a post about how we handle the cold weather and our animals. I can sum up what we do by saying we try to keep things as natural as possible here. An important thing to keep in mind is the lower critical temperature (LCT) of an animal. This is the temperature at which an animal will suffer ill effects and needs additional care including shelter and/or extra feed. Note that does not mean heat. Just shelter and food. Here is some common farm animal average LCTs:
Horse: -15F
Chicken: 12F
Dairy Cow: -22F
Goats: 32F

Goats

I don't really do much for them since they have their usual loafing shed area that is full of straw. The only thing I did was put a piece of wood at an angle in a corner to block the wind a little more since it usually blows from the west and their open side is the south. This gives them a little corner that is free of wind and snow. I feed them in this area and give them a small water dish that is easy to dump and refill if it freezes. A heated water dish for them is on it's way, so they'll have that soon. I have upped their hay in the frigid weather we are having right now (currently 2 deg outside). Despite all the nice straw in the loafing shed, they have been spending the nights in the space under the tack room. Go figure.

Dogs

The pugs barely step foot outside longer than it takes to do their business and if they could get away with it, they wouldn't even do that. Barley will stay outside for a minute when I go out. He'll follow me out to the animals but if I'm not back in a minute he runs back to the house. If it's not below freezing and the sun is out, then Jasmine will go lay in the snow, but on frigid days even she is inside. She has a thick winter coat so she gets hot inside, though so I will usually find her in the laundry room laying right next to the dog door where the cold air is coming in. 

Cats

Rocky stays inside when it's cold. Apollo (the new barn kitten) sleeps in the tack room. He is the only outdoor animal we provide extra heat for. We have 2 lamps with incandescent bulbs shining on his water and bed. It keeps it above freezing in his little area. I don't let him out of the tack room for his usual outdoor time when it's snowy and/or below freezing. I think he's ok with that. 

Chickens

I hear a lot about this topic and have done a lot of reading on it. I get asked a lot about what I do for the chickens when it's cold out. I don't do much. I do not provide supplemental heat or lighting to the birds. I have read that providing heat is worse than not and increases the risk of frost bite. The one thing we did do was put plastic up over the secondary coop's large window to keep the wind and snow out. And it's a good thing we did because even through the small holes we didn't cover there is a dusting of snow in some areas of the coop. We are looking at ideas to block off at least a portion of the run to keep the snow out but so far we haven't found anything feasible, the run is just too large. So for now on subzero days I leave the flocks in the coops simply because they wisely spend their time there any way so I might as well keep the doors shut and the cold air out as much as possible. 

I use a heated dog dish for the main coop and a bucket/nipple system with an aquarium heater for the secondary coop. I feed indoors if there is snow on the ground and I don't do fermented feed in the winter. I do still sprout the peas and lentils for them in the house though. 

I am considering trying to do a fodder system again this winter. I read that 65-68 is the perfect temp and we keep our house around there in the winter so I might be able to do it without getting mold. I would love to give the animals some greens throughout the winter. 

People ask me all the time, "The chickens are ok in this weather!?" Sometimes I find myself drawn in by the concern and seeing all the animals that are receiving supplemental heat and start questioning myself. The internal struggle between doing things naturally and putting my own feelings on the animals starts again. But then as I was sitting on my couch this afternoon I saw some song birds come up to our bird feeder and bare tree and was reminded if they can make it, I'm sure my big fluffy chickens in their down coats will be fine in a nice dry coop!