Snow Critters
Winter has come all at once this year, with 16 inches of hard, white, fluffy water covering the last signs of autumn. Everything is transformed into an instant panorama of white—piles of it, drifts of it.
It’s always interesting to see how the livestock chooses to embrace (or not) this landscape transformation. On the first day of snow, the pullets charged to their coop door (just like any other morning), only to come to a screeching halt at the blanched scene before them. What was all the white stuff? It took a few hours before they were even brave enough to taste it, let alone step in it. Ew, how cold!
But the ducks didn’t seem to care for a moment. Now housed in the brooder coop with all the hens to keep warm and safe from those dreaded bobcats, they pile out the chicken door each morning, out into the snow. Quacking like it’s some raucous party, flapping their wings, and burrowing their bills into the snow like they were mud puddles full of slugs, the ducks proceed without a care for the cold.
In fact, their webbed feet make perfect trouncing instruments for the fluffy stuff, packing down their yard into a perfect ducky runway for daily exercise. The chickens appreciate this greatly and are much more willing to venture outside once the ducks have packed the snow into an easy-tread surface. Now even the pullets sit in the sun, still a little suspicious of their ducky neighbors, but increasingly tolerant of the boisterous antics.
But when the snow falls and the winds blow, those feathered egg layers retreat to the safety of the coop—but not the ducks. I was hauling a wheelbarrow load of manure out to the winter pile and, passing the chicken pen, wondered what had become of the duck flock. Snow was brushing against my face, packing itself on my ponytail, but the poultry yard seemed merely mounded with snow, birdless.
“Hey duck-duck!” I hollered. “Where are you guys?”
And then the snow pile wiggled, and one-by-one duck heads popped up through the powdery white. They quacked in surprise by my presence, beat their wings to dislodge the snow, then hurried back inside the coop. Silly rascals, what a way to take a nap in winter!
The sheep are mainly staying inside the barns, though their woolly coats make them appear rather like marshmallows with stick legs. On sunny days, the ladies venture out into their back pen to soak some rays, but they are nervous of the slipperiness. Hooves may be great for walking, but they’re not the same as claws on ice-packed surfaces. But if you throw them a bale of hay outside, the food motivator is more than enough to overcome any snowy hesitation.
Lexy the donkey and Carmel the mini horse live next door to the lamb barn, and during the day they have free range of the surrounding paddock. Trounce, trounce, trounce, let’s go look over here. Maybe someone spilled a little grain or hay. Trounce, trounce, trounce, let’s go see what’s happening over there. The two equines have carved paths through the snow as they make their daily curiosity rounds, the sprinkling snow gathering a light skiff on their furry backs. Even Carmel’s face is amazingly furry—amply ready for the climate of the season.
But the dear pigs can’t escape their shortness like the donkey or horse. Instead of trotting about to pack down the snow, they simply push through it like piggy snow plows, snouts pointed upwards. It parts before them in lumpy waves until they can pack down their trails between shelter, food, and water.
Kara’s amassed a collection of pumpkins, carrots, and apples for them to eat, along with the sprouted grain fodder that we grow. All these, along with hay, make for exciting piggy chow time. Kara will come up to a pigless snowscape by the pen, calling out that dinner is on. First one grunt, then another, and the troop piles out of the straw-filled calf hutch that serves as home-sweet-home. They all trundle down their trail, like, “Oh boy, I’ve been waiting for this all day!”
Our sheep dog Lena typically sticks to the trails, but now and then her excitement for the day gets the better of her, and she starts tearing through the virgin snow like a wild hyena. That is, until it gets about chest deep for her, when it will start to drag her down, and she’ll suddenly stop, panting with tongue lolling, and look around like, “So, how do I get out of here now?” Then up comes a frozen back foot, shaking, and that “help me mommy” look. Aw, come on Lena, let’s go back inside for a minute.
And so, each of the critters finds their own way of dealing with the snowy weather on the farm. Since I don’t grow a winter coat, it means piling on the boots, insulated work pants, down coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. Sometimes I wonder if the animals think that I become a strange sight once the snows arrive, plodding along with all this clothing when they can merely fluff up their feathers. “Goodness, those humans sure look like they have an inconvenient way of dealing with the weather.”
How do the critters in your life learn to adjust to the snowy condition? Whether it’s the birds at the feeder, the trotting flock of turkeys, the winding fox, or the browsing deer. Part of what’s exciting about winter is the emergence of all their tracks. Tiny bird footprints where I spilled a little feed outside the chicken coop door, the tunneling trail of mice beneath the snow, the hurried steps of cottontails, or the swooping imprint of an owl.
All these things go on almost unnoticed during the green grass season of summer, but now we’re leaving our imprints of existence in the tablet of the snow. Uh oh, another turkey must have flown out of her pen. I can see the tracks headed that way, so I gotta go find her before the coyotes do. Watch out snowbanks, here I come! See you down on the farm sometime.
