The last bad day according to the weather forecast

During the night we were woken up several times by howling winds. This was the scene when I went out this morning.

This morning

The forecast was for snow from one o’clock in the afternoon until one o’clock the following morning. I therefore decided that there was no point getting rid of the snow on the chickens’ patio roof. The forecast for Saturday is four degrees and for Sunday it’s eight degrees, heaven! With this in mind I decided to clear the snow tomorrow. Just one more day to hang on in these conditions.

I was a bit worried about Dandelion as she refused to eat the tylan mash or drink the tylan water. She would eat sunflower hearts and corn but was refusing anything else. Without the mash or water she isn’t getting the protection of the tylan and she is the one that needs it the most. I decided to warm the mash and put some chopped grapes on top to encourage her to have some.

I gave the girls some chopped grapes on top of their warmed mash

Dandelion ate the grapes from the top of the mash. In the photo above she has a bit of grape in her beak.

Dandelion hides her head in her ruffles

Dandelion spent some time like this and I considered bringing her indoors for the day. I thought it over and decided against it. I felt it would be more of a shock to her to take her from cold to warm and then put her back out in the cold again. As this is the last really cold day and she is eating some seeds, corn and grapes, I decided that it would be best to hang on until tomorrow. If she can get through today she will be through the worst of it.

Later in the afternoon Freckles was scratching in the run just beyond the patio so I dug over the top part of the run to give them some space without snow. It is so gloomy in the chicken shed because of the snow on the roof that the girls had all moved out towards the run. I put their dish of mash at the edge of the patio and was pleased to see that Dandelion had some. She looked okay and I felt that I had made the right decision.

The next time I went up all the girls were in the big shelter out in the run. I think the patio area was so gloomy that they were drawn to the shelter for more light. It began to snow again and they went back towards the chicken shed.

Three o’clock

I am so glad that we were back from delivering our lunch and doing our shopping before the snow started again. The traffic outside our front window was at a crawl by three o’clock. I think that I will get the chickens in half an hour early today as it’s so dark in the run now.

I look forward to tomorrow being a better day and I am sure the chickens will be very pleased if they can get back out in the run again.