Despite the frost, the wind and the cold, we are still getting some beautiful periods of sunshine and the animals are not daft, if they can find a bit of warmth, they do. It’s never enough to melt things though and so we are somewhat slaves to the water bucket just now, carrying buckets and barrowfuls from the house out to all the animals. The two large troughs in the 4-acre have, up until today, just needed breaking up to reveal water underneath a thick layer of ice but today the layers were just too think and the water underneath virtually gone, and so we had to get some temporary water containers into the field pdq. Cows can drink up to 100 litres a day when lactating but ours being smaller won’t drink as much nor will their winter intake just now be anywhere near to that. Nonetheless, all the animals still need water as without it they cannot digest their food properly and so access those essential nutrients. We are currently checking the containers several times each day as they all re-freeze quite quickly!!!
Tonight is meant to see the start of some proper snow. The bulk of it is arriving tomorrow and we are also due to get quite windy as well. As everything is coming from the east, our east facing shelters are not going to be quite as effective as they have been. Tonight therefore we moved the alpacas into the Collecting Area so they could have the Cow Shed. That way all three animal groups have a shelter each now and so if they need to get right to the back to avoid those easterlies, they can!!