What's Up with Martha's Feathers?

[3bird]

Martha was looking much better when we let them out this morning, but in no time she was soaked. What are you going to do when you have a 10 F heatwave? Here she is when we first let them out this am.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Not much as long as they want to play in the water. Hopefully she'll just get back inside and preen herself dry.

I was looking for frost bite on my scovy's this morning but can't tell yet and some of my chickens have large combs too. We're getting hit again tonight with around 1-3 with wind chills below zero. I know All of us are way over this weather. Are ya'll getting the Nor Easter that is heading up the east coast?

Thankfully we're to be more normal next week, I sure hope it's true.

 

[3bird]

Not much as long as they want to play in the water. Hopefully she'll just get back inside and preen herself dry.

I was looking for frost bite on my scovy's this morning but can't tell yet and some of my chickens have large combs too. We're getting hit again tonight with around 1-3 with wind chills below zero. I know All of us are way over this weather. Are ya'll getting the Nor Easter that is heading up the east coast?

Thankfully we're to be more normal next week, I sure hope it's true.

We're on the coast in Maine and right in the path of this storm. We are now officially under a Blizzard Warning. It looks like temps will rise during the storm (and even approach the freezing mark, which we have not seen in quite a while), but we're also looking at 1+ foot of snow and winds gusting to over 50 MPH Thursday night. Then we go into serious deep freeze Friday into Saturday with double digit F negative temperatures. Lots of prep to do today around the farm.

 

[3bird]

Do your ducks preen each other ever? In the beginning of this video, it looks like Mouse (the duck on the left) is being annoying to Martha, but you'll see she then sort of settles into what looks like preening behavior, which Martha seems to permit. We've observed this before, especially with these two. There is no feather pulling, and generally it seems consensual.

 

[3bird]

I just stumbled across this and wanted to let everyone know that Martha is doing great! She had her first real adult molt this past summer (at almost 2.5 years old!), and her feathers came back in gorgeous with blue bars and all. She is 1000% more confident. Here she is tonight jumping in joy for warm soup on a cold day:

 

[Miss Lydia]

She looks great!! Great picture