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The winter of 2009 came in 3 stages - snow, ice and more snow. I love the snow (I know I'm nuts but I'm from Pittsburgh - Go Steelers! Super Bowl Champs! - so what can I say!). I love how my backyard looks with all the trees snow covered. This is a picture of our chicken house just as the third stage of the storm was hitting.
We lucked out this year - the ice didn't cause too much damage. Hurricane Ike took care of that in the Fall. Our pine trees suffered the most.
The chickens and ducks didn't seem to mind the weather. They spent most of the day pecking through the snow. The only difficulty we had was keeping the water buckets thawed out (the goats have heated water buckets so they have plenty of water).
The dairy goats were not happy with the snow and hardly ventured out of the barn. My boer goats loved it as we would often see them wandering around the pen.
Goats can usually tolerate the cold, wintry weather. The only time we really get concerned is when babies are being born. Fortunately, I have only lost two babies to the cold weather. Some babies will get frost bite ears - you just cut off the frost bitten part.
Our dairy goats didn't get bred as early this year as we had planned. It looks like we should be having baby goats sometime in April and May. Anyone wishing to see the babies, should give us a call to make arrangements to see them.
