The Snow and the Omlet

Yet more snow arrived overnight! I have never known so much snow since we moved here several years ago. There is nothing more exciting than opening up the curtains to find everything covered in a layer of pure white. Sometimes if the snow is thicker, the sounds of traffic and other noises of a busy town are softened by the snow, making the world seem a quieter, more peaceful place. As a chicken owner however, snow can be a problem. I walked down to the allotment worried that the water feeders would be frozen. Thankfully, they weren’t although I took advantage of the main coop one being nearly empty to clean it. The water in the water butt was horribly cold on the fingers!

Carefully, I checked all the chickens and they weren’t showing signs of frostbite or taking cold badly. Apart from being grumpy at the delay to having their treats, they all seemed well. More incredibly, I discovered three eggs in the nest box! We have had that many eggs in at least eight weeks! Maybe the lengthening days are finally convincing the girls to start laying at last.

Up in the greenhouse, Sadie, Leia and Lilja stared sulkily at me as I cleaned them out and only relented with the reproachful looks when I put out their food. There continues to be a dirth of eggs despite the girls in the main coop starting to lay. I told them what I thought of their freeloading ways and left them to ponder my words.

Back at home, I dragged out an enormous box into the garden which contained two extension sections to the Omlet coop. This will be home to our three gorgeous silkies when they are bigger and the weather is much warmer. Omlet prides itself on simple assembly of their coops and to some extent I agree. However, the assembly diagram was pretty much useless so I ended up just winging it. Inevitably, this led to a half an hour job taking nearly two hours. The first extension section tapered ever so slightly towards the base but until I had tried and failed to attach it to the run, did I discover I had put it on backwards. Resigning myself to undoing all the fiddly clips and bashing my fingers repeatedly in the progress, I swapped it around and moved onto the next section. This promised to be easier as there was no tapering.

Yet I still managed to get one section attached before realising it was upsidedown. Losing patience and the light, I quickly rotated it into the correct position and clipped it into place. The anti-fox skirt at the base of the run took some attaching with the clips proving more difficult due to the lack of space between the wire and the ground. Eventually, it was done and I attached the end of the run which has a small door. By now the dark was really closing in, so I dashed to try out the Eglu cover and attach the transparent run cover. As the final bungee clip went into place, the last of the light went. Cold, muddy and distinctly irritated at the unhelpful instructions, I went back inside.

Tomorrow morning, depending on the temperature, I plan to put the chicks outside to explore their new home. The snowy weather will still be with us for a few days so the chicks will still spend most of their time in their indoor enclosure.