I'm just checking...is it April?

I have been so busy with lambs and chicken moving that I hadn't had much of a chance to watch the weather reports, so it was a rude awakening this morning when I went out to do chores and discovered that I needed to drag out my winter gear again. The temperatures are predicted to fall into the mid 20's - low 30's over night, so I spent most of the day trying to prepare the animals for the cold. Since we moved the little chickens to their 'new' barn on Sunday, I was a little worried about them getting chilled tonight. There is so much more space for them to spread their body heat around and they are not completely feathered yet, so I made the second trip to Farm & Fleet in as many days to purchase another heat lamp to place in with the chicklets. It's a bit embarrassing when I go into Farm & Fleet and EVERYONE that works there knows me....by name........I guess I shop there too much? I digress.

The chicks are 3 weeks old now.
Barred Rock

Blue Laced Red Wyandotte
Speckled Sussex

Blue Laced Red.....again...I kinda like these guys.

The chicks seem like they will be toasty warm. Besides the heat lamp, they also have about 4 bags of pine shavings in their coop, which, if you have ever opened a compressed bag of pine shavings you know that there is the equivalent of about two trees in there that comes bursting out of the bag.

I added a heat lamp in with the ewes too. Trillium is showing some signs that I might be in for another long night, so I put her in a jug, just to be on the safe side, and strung a heat lamp up above in case the temps get really low and I have wet lambs to deal with.

I am worried about my apple trees too. They have not quite flowered yet, but they are really close and if we get much below 30 degrees I may end up losing some or most of my crop this year. Last year after the trees had blossomed we had a very hard freeze, it was about 19 degrees for a day or two and I lost my entire apple and pear crop for the year.

It is supposed to warm up later this week....I can't wait. We still have the barn doors on the roof of the barn , it has been too rainy for anyone to get equipment out there to make the necessary repairs.

Hopefully next week things will be back on track and the lambs will be out on nice pasture in the bright sunshine.