We have to make “chicken tractors”. We will move the chickens all over the property. Their house will have buried wire and a secured bottom wire.
We are in northern ID, about 38 miles from the Canadian border, between 2 mtn. ranges. Forest. You get the drift. It means golden and bald eagles along with other raptor birds in the skies. On the ground, coyotes, wolves, bobcats, mtn. lions, raccoons, fox, various weasels, badgers, bears (including grizzlies), etc. Everything eats everything around here. My little dog runs around when we are working outside. We keep a tight eye on her, being a food group. She is not left out unattended. The chickens will have protection too.
A neighbor lost all of his chickens last summer. Not to predators, though he let his run around 24/7. For some strange reason, they were all killed by a train. Why would they not get off the tracks? It was weird. They loved the snow.
We got more snow yesterday. It is 3’ deep in spots. Rain later in the week. The ground is frozen. I am glad for our elevation and living on the side of a gentle slope. If the snows all melt, there is going to be some major ice and water flowing.
It is 34 degrees at 8 am. There is ice on the netting outside. I could see that and I’m not checking the row cover and quilts to see if they are frozen. It is raining a mixture of ice pellets/rain, not enough you can see it coming down but I can hear it and held my arm outside the roofed deck and rain was hitting my arm.
Weather channel says we have a “wintry mix” of snow/ice which will change to rain and all this has a 70% chance of happening. Just saw on weather channel that Houston has trees down due to icing and power is out in some places.
Weather channel is about to talk about this ice in Texas.
My birds go in their coop at night, and the ducks have a separate coop. Both have a lot of wire to keep them secure. During the day, we let them free range over 5 acres. We lost a couple ducks two nights ago because they decided to nest in a copse of juniper and we didn’t account for them. A raccoon got them.