By Karen Quinn
As the evenings grow colder and the nights get longer, I find myself looking for signs of Jack Frost on the windows and a small dusting of snow on the pines. As the season progresses, I make treks down to the river to see if the edges have started to form their delicate lace of ice and wake up each morning hoping to see a snow-covered wonderland. The kind of snow that brings silence and a deep, peaceful calm to the landscape where, when the sun hits it just right, the world glitters like diamonds.
There are harder aspects of winter as well. The biting cold, harsh winds, and ice storms can make even the most fervent lover of winter begin to daydream about spring. For me, the one part of winter that makes me not quite so excited is the coop in our backyard. Now, I don’t want you to think that I don’t absolutely adore my hens, because I do! They’re a wonderful, constant source of eggs, pest control, and entertainment. Eight months out of the year, they’re the easiest things to take care of on our little farm. But for the other four months, they become a great source of stress and are one of the harder chores we handle in the snowy season.
I can also state with confidence that the hens aren’t the biggest fans of winter. They miss their bugs, abundance of green snacks, and warm sunshine. They get so bored at times that they will just start bullying each other for fun, even though they have more than adequate space in the coop and run. To combat this bickering, we have devised a few “boredom busters” over the years that not only keep them entertained but us as well.
One of these boredom busters is the cabbage tetherball. We find a nice, dense winter cabbage, hammer a dowel rod through the center, and suspend it from the coop ceiling with bailer twine. We’ve even leveled it up in the past few years by turning it more into a cabbage pinata by peeling some of the leaves back and putting mealworms and sunflower seeds inside. The excited clucking, clicking, and scrambling that happens when they find the hidden layer of goodies always elicits a burst of laughter from me. We also keep leftover pumpkins, squash, and other vegetables that will keep well when cellared to give them throughout the season. A cracked open old jack-o-lantern never goes to waste at our farm.
Another good way to keep the stir craziness at bay is by making the hens help with rebedding the coop. We do a bedding technique called “deep littering,” where we put about 3” to 4” of cedar chips on the floor, and then put a whole bale of straw on top to create warmth. Then we clear the straw that is soiled daily and replace it as needed. But, instead of breaking up the flakes of straw, we only put one or two spread out to get the base layer started, and then we enlist the aid of the girls to do the rest. Same goes for when we replace straw when we take any out. Picking apart the flakes to get the oat seeds, bug carcasses, and whatever else they find in there can be an entire day of entertainment, and because they take it apart more carefully, it keeps the dust down in the coop as well. It’s a win- win!
The harder part of this is finding activities that our duck hens enjoy. Chickens are just tiny velociraptors, so if you give them something they can peck at and pull apart for hours, you’re good as gold. Ducks, on the other hand, love one thing and one thing only—water. Water in and on everything, all the time. Our way of keeping them as happy as possible is by setting up a heated water bucket in the far corner of the coop because (and I’m sure you can read the writing on the wall), when water is splashed outside of the bucket it quickly turns to ice.
Now, with the ducks, this is simply another opportunity to have a good laugh. They’re very deft on their wide, webbed feet so they just slide around chasing each other, and it is an absolute delight to watch. Chickens, on the other hand, are very susceptible to frostbite, so the dance we have to navigate to keep the chickens safe and the ducks happy takes a bit of finesse.
Another interesting factor is that the ducks absolutely love it outside during the winter and would prefer to be out in the run, even if the temperature is hovering below freezing. When it gets really cold, they’ll begrudgingly move into the coop, and they will then partake in the chicken’s heated watering system, and it’s a mess. They get water everywhere and since it’s a rustic coop, ice can absolutely happen inside. To combat this, we created a two-part system.
First, the chicken’s water is set up on a series of buckets, so most of the water ends up in the bottom basin and not out on the coop floor. The second part came as an investment in a plastic doghouse that we cram full of straw in the run so the ducks have a little extra cover and warmth without having to go into the coop if they don’t want to.
Of course, if the weather isn’t horrible, and the temperature isn’t too low, we let them out into the yard to play and stretch their wings when we do our daily chores, getting the cabin fever out of their systems. The chickens might migrate about two feet away from the coop before looking at me with an air of disdain and turning tail to head back inside. Meanwhile, the ducks will venture a lot further out, sometimes as far as the way back to inspect their pond to see if it’s still frozen over before retreating to their water bucket.
All in all, I’m sure compared to most flocks, these girls are spoiled rotten, and I must constantly remind myself of that as I trudge through the cold and snow only to open the coop doors to find eleven sets of brown eyes staring with absolute indifference at the sounds of cackling quacks and splashes resonating against the silence of the snow.
Karen Quinn is a writer and artist who homesteads on a rural urban farm in Livonia with her husband, son, and menagerie of animals. Her favorite things are napping, exploring, and drinking tea.
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The biggest picture on the wall of my home office is not of my wife or daughter, or our parents, or any other relative. It is of a now long-gone but still cherished member of our family—our first dog. Murphy was a brown and white, thirty-pound Sheltie my wife and I adopted a few years after we married. He was, before our daughter was born, our first “child.” He was a thoroughly lovable dog. Sharp as a tack—I taught him to sit and shake in about ten minutes—an endless source of delight in games of fetch, and great company—most of the time. He was also an incorrigible chowhound, forcing us to guard our food zealously at mealtimes. He exploded into fits of barking and jumping whenever we had guests or if he saw a bicyclist, car, or dog on our walks. We tolerated it all, not knowing that it might be possible to change those behaviors. We figured it was a small price for living with a wonderful dog.