It's dusk here and Jake was going crazy, barking towards the woods and looking down at the house...that's his signal that something big is out there. The local black bears are not out in this cold, so I know it's the 'yote pack taking advantage of this cold to hunt down some bedded down prey. I took the shotgun up and made my presence known and checked on the coop...minus 2 in there and the birds were shuffling for position on the roosts.
My coop is pretty open air in some ways, so no real insulation going on there. I decided to turn on the heat lamp for just this night, thinking to give the gals a better night's rest. It won't be enough to warm them up but might take off the chill in the coop. As I was leaving the coop I noticed all the fresh chicken tracks in the snow...those silly birds were out in this today!!!
It hasn't got above 7 degrees for most of the day, with windchill factors in the negative teens and has been howling snow, and those silly things were out in it. Tough birds.