Surviving the Missouri Winter

Our Cinnamon Queen Chickens

After the snow storm, we had a couple of weeks of really cold temperatures. We were forewarned of the colder than normal temperatures for our area and were worried about out animals surviving, so went and bought a brooder/coop heater to put in the coop to help them stay warm in the below zero temperatures. They seemed to fair well and were fairly happy as we got 5 eggs a day most days over this time period. (Our 6th chicken was slow to start laying, but we believe she just started laying eggs on Jan. 27th, so hopefully we will get 6 eggs a day soon.)

As you can tell from the pictures, it got quite muddy and stinky out there.

It was super wet for a week or so after the temps warmed up, and it took us a bit before we believed trying to clean would do any good.

They enjoyed their time out of the coop when we finally went out and cleaned things up a bit.

They also seemed to enjoy the new shavings when they came back into the run.

We were a bit worried about the chickens all needing the nest boxes at the same time, so we made an additional nesting box, that is is the run, but not the coop. So far, they mostly ignore it, but one day they knocked the door down and closed the coop. One chicken was locked inside and the other five outside. One chicken decided to use the new nest box. When Martin went out and discovered the door closed, he said that the chickens were very happy to change places; the one trapped inside quickly came out, and two went in and right to the nest boxes.

On Feb. 3-4, we hung some new toys out for the chickens. We have not noticed that they have even noticed them yet, but at least we have tried to help them not be board.

Our Rex Rabbits

We were also worried about our rabbits in the below zero temperatures. We decided to buy an additional heat lamp, so that we could hang a heat lamp between each pair of rabbits to give them a bit of warmth. They also seem to have faired well, with us going out multiple times a day to give them and the chickens warm water. Parsley is the only one that appears to have been extremely affected by the cold, because she started using her loft as her bathroom. We hoped that she would stop this behavior as soon as it warmed up, but so far she hasn't. When it gets a bit warmer and we turn our hose back on, we will remove the cages and put the rabbits in our new rabbit tractor and give the cages a real good cleaning. Maybe that will help Parsley to revert back to her old behavior.

In December, Martin went out and made a rabbit tractor so that we will be ready for bunnies. After it was finished we tried to mate Sunny with the girls, but none of them cooperated. On January 28th, it had warmed up enough that we decided to put Sunny and Parsley together again. It appeared to be successful this time, so hopefully we can report back in about a month that we have our first bunnies. Hopefully the other girls will cooperate the next time we put them with Sunny and we can have lots of baby bunnies.