Cooped Up

Morning walk with the Dud.  Enjoying what’s left of the fall leaves as the morning frost becomes a daily occurrence…

As I mentioned, a few weeks ago we were hit with the cold part of Frankenstorm.  No snow, but forecasts of temperatures in the low 30s with high winds prompted Paul to further winterize our chicken coop.

Ha, right.  I wish.  Coops like these make me feel a little (or lot) inadequate.

As you might remember, a few weeks ago we took our coop from “summer” coop:

…to “winterized” coop:

Then we had the egg problem, prompting us to further insulate:

Then 2 weekends ago, the storms arrived.  With what we had, we did what we could to protect the girls from the icy winds predicted over that weekend.

Yes, there it is.  Our winter chicken palace.

As you can see, we (read: Paul) pretty much just boarded the whole thing up…in a very stylistic manner.  The only part not completely boarded up is at the end where the feeding trough is, making it really dark inside.  Doesn’t seem to bother the ladies, though.  They’ve both been laying earlier in the morning and NOT EATING THEIR EGGS!  Score.

This turned out to be good timing, seeing as how on Sunday, after a cold, cloudy morning that seemed to be bordering on snow flurries, it started to thunder and lightning.  Then this happened:

Big, fat hail.  Wtf.  Fortunately the girls were safe in their fortress.  Here’s to hoping that’s the last of the coop updates till spring.