It was a sunny day and the temperature reached above 50 degrees F. There was a hint of green on the lawn. The chickens were desperate for an outing, and as soon as I let them out, they eagerly downed the green grass blades.

After months of not having anything to graze, the goats were also eager for an outing.

I didn’t let them gorge as they can overdo it and get bellyaches. So, they ate some grass, and then I moved them over for a bit of the water celery coming up at the back of the little pond.

Notice that the boys are dragging leashes. You’d think that with all of the green around them that they wouldn’t get into trouble. I had to step inside the house for one minute. Just one. I left the boys ankle deep in the water celery happily munching away. When I came out this is what I saw:

The boys were all the way on the other side of the yard. At the raspberry patch. Pip had a mouthful. He declared the buds delicious.

While Caper was scratching his head on last season’s canes.

Thanks to the leashes, I was able to pull them away before there was too much damage. By the way, that pile of white on the other side of the fence? It’s snow. It makes the grass look all that greener, doesn’t it?

It’s still a chilly and windy 40 degrees F, but the sun is out and springtime is definitely here. I know because the goats are shedding. Pip has a thick and sticky undercoat that is now more like an overcoat.

Lucky for him the Goat Maid has a FURminator.

All of the grooming and attention makes the boys playful. They do like to show off for the Goat Maid.

But, nipping a brother’s ears during shedding season means a mouthful of fur. Yuck!

Buffy has been itchy, too. You can’t dust bathe in a rabbit hutch. So, yesterday she got some much needed sun and dirt time. The other hens still beat up on her, so she had a spa hour with the goats. They were perfect gentlemen.

Little fluffy chicks need help staying warm. Their downy feathers aren’t good insulation. A cold wind goes right through them. A mama hen provides protection under her thick coat and next to her warm skin. But, chicks don’t stay under the hen all day. They venture out and about. In nature, most sensible hens hatch their chicks late in the springtime when the weather has warmed up. Still, weather is variable, and the chicks, even just a few days old, experience a range of temperatures.

Those of us who order chicks through the mail keep our babies warm with a heat lamp in a protected box called a brooder. The rule of thumb is that the first week the brooder should be at 95 degrees F. Each week thereafter the temp is dropped (by raising the lamp up) by 5 degrees. But in reality, it’s more complicated than that. Chicks can easily get overheated, especially if you have only a few babies in a small plastic carton. Last year I heard from two different people whose chicks were dying. I finally figured out that they were too hot. Instead of judging if the temperature is right using a thermometer, use the chick’s behavior as a guide. To do  this, there must be enough room in the brooder for the chicks to get out from under the heat lamp! There should be shadowy, cooler areas.

Comfortable chicks are evenly spaced. They are generally quiet. If there’s a lot of high-pitched cheeping, they’re distressed. These chicks are just right.

Chicks will go from very active to asleep in a blink of an eye. Sometimes, they fall asleep in mid-step! They sleep near each other but not piled up.

If it’s too cold, they’ll huddle directly under the heat lamp. It got down to about 20 degrees last night. The air in the shadows was quite chilly, but the chicks were fine under the lamp. I could tell that they were okay because there’s still some space between them, and they were quiet.

If they’re too warm, they’ll move away from the lamp. Here they’re keeping their butts warm, and their heads in the shadows.

They look like a group of Brownie Scouts around a campfire. I’m waiting for them to burst into a version of Kumbaya. If the chicks entirely avoided going directly under the heat lamp, I’d raise it up a notch, but as I watched them, they finished their naps and hurried hither yon, under the lamp, and drank and ate. The chicks were able to regulate their body temperature by moving around the brooder.

Taking good care of the chicks is all about paying attention. Of course, that means that I have to spend time watching the chicks, which is about the best excuse ever to procrastinate from my work.

On Thursday, March 28, I left a snow-covered yard and flew to Austin, Texas where the temperature was twice what it was at home (mid-80s!) and there were trees covered in little yellow flower puffs.

They reminded me of the chicks being delivered while I was away. But, I knew that Steve would take good care of them, so I was free to enjoy the blooms, which included the justifiably famous bluebonnets. (Did you know that the Texas Department of Transportation annually sows 15 tons of wildflower seeds over 800,000 acres alongside Texas roadways? Texas is big and beautiful.)

There were butterflies.

It was so hot that turtles were out basking in the sun (I took this photo at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.)

I arrived home in the early hours this morning. It’s windy. The temperature isn’t going to reach above freezing. But, I must have sent some of that Texas weather up here, because most of the snow has melted.

And there is the promise of blossoms pushing up in the front woodland.

I’ll fill you in on my trip, and of course do some updates on the chicks, as soon as I catch up on laundry and on sleep!