Showing posts with label molting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label molting. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2019

In The Bleak Midwinter............

The little hens are safe and relatively warm in their own room inside the barn:

The white fantail pigeons have an even bigger room in the barn, but I'm afraid it's beginning to stink. Winter is a bad time to clean it, so I keep adding pine shavings. Nonetheless, the birds look happy and healthy:

A few birds are getting quite old, but mostly they seem quite perky:

And others seem to already be thinking about possible new nest sites:

Inside the house, Caspar and Sammy are best of friends:

Seamus, Bugsy and Daphne prefer the yoga mat by my computer chair so they can keep me company:

We've had a winter of alternating snowstorms and thaws. One morning during a thaw, I snapped this photo of the barn, the house and the neighbors' barn across the road:

But no January thaw lasts very long and soon it is cold and snowy again:

One lone hen is molting much too late. I feared she'd get too cold and die, but she seems to be growing out her new feathers without too much problem:

Jasmine is my friendliest cow, the only one who really welcomes me rubbing her neck beneath her chin:

And life seems to revolve around hay bales - keeping the herd supplied, keeping a count on how many are left and worrying about running out before winter is over:

Blue was picking through the leftover hay after I'd moved the bale feeder and Jasmine had just gotten up from her night's sleep: