Amps, Watts, Volts and Cold

How do we while away the winter evenings? We're heading into another cold spell so tonight we multi-tasked. Jeff fired up the woodburning stove and we boiled water to make tea and relax with the dog and cat in the basement. Well, the cat wasn't really relaxed and the dog was just pretending to be relaxed in between harassing the cat so he could get that dog treat in my hand. Then we discussed how many water heating elements, heaters and heat lights could be run in various combinations without overworking the single fuse all are on while still keeping everybody (every chicken-body and heifer-body) content.

We've got one hen with a hurt foot healing up so she's alone on one side of the hen house and we've had to take Rosie out of solitary. Rosie is the single homegrown hen we kept from the batch that were hatched from our birds on the farm last year. For the past few weeks she's been broody, hogging a nest, sitting on a wooden egg all day, and thinking now is a good time of year to have a little batch of chicks. You can see how this would be a problem. So we isolated her in the old tiny hut alone this weekend while the weather was warm. That's one of the possible "cures" for broodiness... to separate the hen and leave her with food, water, but no nest. Since it's going to be so cold we let her back in with the group tonight. She's obviously not yet "cured" as she showed us by promptly hopping up into one of the nest boxes and growling (I don't know a better word to describe it) at us when we reach in to remove her. I guess she and I will be having more discussions this week about what weather is good for raising chicken kids.

Stay warm everybody!
Toby