It was 5 degrees warmer outside and 3 degrees warmer inside this morning! Woo hoo! But still cold.
On another positive note, I didn’t have to pick axe as many containers this morning as most of them were frozen solid. So I hauled hot water from the house for most of the animals. The tank deicer is working well for the cows. I did collect ice chunks to add to it to keep the water level up for them.
No more known deaths. For sure, no domestic animal deaths, but likely some wild animals deaths on our property that we do not know about. But I am doing my best to keep some water available as well as bird seeds and sugar water for the hummingbirds. We have mostly been able to keep Wally in so no more bird murders from her that we know about. One aspect of this freeze is that some of the eggs are freezing solid and splitting before we can get to them.
Tomorrow the daytime temperatures are supposed to be above freezing at 33 degrees. The low is supposed to be 17. Hopefully that will help a little bit. This has been exhausting.
Going through the same things on our place here in Virginia but staying in the 20’s. I’m checking the eggs about every two hours but that will increase tomorrow since we’re dropping into single digits tonight. It is definitely a challenge making sure everyone is warm. More hay in the dog boxes and chicken nests, ground feed to the cows and Sadie, our elkhound, is in the house more than the outdoors. We do have woodstoves in the house and I’m really going through some wood. The only young calf we have so far came early and he is a ball of fire and keeping his mama on the run. She’s giving lots of milk so he’s warm from the inside and very playful. He was almost two months early but think mama went on a walk-about when we weren’t looking because the cattle aren’t supposed to start calving until the last week of February. Stay warm ladybug and get that rest!!!!
Rita
You are doing the same stuff we are to try to keep everyone warm, except we don’t have a stove in the house anymore. Glad your calf is doing well.
I’m sorry you no longer have the wood stove in the house. I wish we had something like that, but it would be a lot of work to haul either wood or bags of pellets in. We’re using a small electric heater to raise the inside temp. It helps quite a big.
That’s too bad you’ve been losing eggs from the freeze.
We haven’t lost power, as many have done. However, we did lose our cable TV, and out internet. The internet was back early this morning, and the cable was restored around noon. I didn’t appreciate not being able to check on the weather news, and all, and I didn’t like missing Jeopardy! But we survived.
I miss the stove for the heat and ambience but don’t miss the safety worries, hauling the pellets in and throwing away the plastic bags. I am glad your electric heater is keeping you warm and that you didn’t lose power. Us losing eggs is one of the lesser concerns here but it is raining this morning so the Great Freeze appears to be over! I am sorry you missed Jeopardy though.