Just over eight years ago I decided that my good farm dog Lily needed a buddy. She was working hard, chasing foxes, coyotes and neighbor’s dogs off of the property. Because her job was to keep these canines away, it wasn’t easy for her to make friends. How was she to know who was a threat and who wasn’t? Lily didn’t take a break during her day. Even when napping, she would listen for hawks in the sky. I thought that Lily looked stressed. She needed a light-hearted playmate. It was time to get another dog.

I knew that it was going to be hard to integrate a second dog into the household, so I looked for one with the right temperament and history. I found an 8-week old puppy that was in loving foster care, with a big dog and teenagers in the house. He was happy and unfazed by what was going on around him, and friendly to us.

In the last eight years, Scooter has earned his keep as Lily’s sidekick. He’s Robin to her Batman. When she gets too serious, he pesters her to play. He keeps her company on her watch. Sometimes his nap vibes are so powerful that even Lily relaxes.

Scooter was born perfect. Potty training was easy. I didn’t bother with any formal lessons. I didn’t have to.

But last year, that changed. I enrolled in the KPA Professional Trainer’s course. This is a six-month program that teaches how to train animals with positive reinforcement (a system sometimes called clicker training.) Part of the curriculum entails doing exercises with a dog that has never been trained with this method. Luckily, I had one right in the house – Scooter.

When I started training him, he was seven years old. Yes, you can certainly teach an old dog new tricks! Before we began, he didn’t do much more than turn his head if you said his name, and even then, he rarely looked for eye contact with humans. Rather, being a little guy (only eleven pounds) and close to the floor, he paid attention to our feet. Unlike other dogs who make connections – the jingling of keys means a car ride is imminent – Scooter went through his days oblivious. For example, he has never connected the leash with going for walks (which, by the way, he loves.)

Despite being a dog of little brain (and I do say that with love), I knew that he could do the coursework. Positive reinforcement isn’t useful just for smart animals (it’s what’s used to train dolphins.) A clam can be trained to open it’s shell with this technique. Surely, I could train Scooter. For the final evaluation, Scooter had to be able to do ten behaviors on cue, with no breaks in-between. The criteria for these behaviors are exacting. The cues had to vary, some auditory, some gestures, some the presentation of a prop. The response to the cue had to be immediate and the behavior precise. You can’t just say, “My dog will stand on a book.” You have to say with which feet. Does your dog sit? Well, is that for 2 seconds or until released? I’m spoiled with dog training. Lily is a genius. She has a whole repertoire of tricks that I’ve taught her just because I could, and it was fun and easy. Lily watched the training sessions that I did with Scooter. You could almost see her roll her eyes. I trained Scooter to whack a tile with his right paw. Progress was slow. In frustration one day, Lily got up from her place (where I’d asked her to wait – she is a well-trained dog) and she thwacked the tile as if to say, Dim wit! This is what she wants you to do!

Training is simply a way to communicate with animals. Be consistent, clear, tactful and rewarding, and the being you’re working with engages with you. Even Scooter. Soon, instead of a dog that looked at my toes, he was gazing into my face. And he was asking for more training sessions.

In between all of that work, Scooter kept to his usual schedule, which entailed sleeping in, and many naps.

The final exam was last week. We drove to a dog training facility, which was a stressful place for Scooter. There were smells and weird surfaces to walk on. Dogs he didn’t know, barking. Lily didn’t come. It was Robin, all on his own.

Scooter did his behavior chain flawlessly. He was quite proud of himself. Here he is right after, back in his safe crate, where, after he let me know that he is a genius dog after all, he promptly curled up and fell asleep.

I don’t have a video of the final, but here is one taken about a week before. (Note that the paw whack there is with his left paw. I retrained that for a consistent right paw touch. Scooter learned that in 3 days.)

I am taking my certification and training skills into the horse world, where there is much need of kindness, and of training based on science and ethology. If you want to understand why your horse does what he does, if you want a cooperative horse that eagerly engages in training and enjoys his work, I’d be happy to help. I’m available for email, Skype, or in-person consultations.

A place that has displays that look like this:

and this:

doesn’t usually have this among the art:

The Laurelwood Garden Club holds its monthly meetings at the Fitchburg Art Museum. I was invited to give my talk, Gardening for Chicken Keepers, to the group this morning, and I was encouraged to bring a hen. That’s unusual. Chickens give off dander and have dirt between their toes. Museum curators flinch at the idea of live birds shaking dust into their air. I’ve talked at museums before, and have never been allowed to bring a chicken. But, this room’s collection was well-protected and the room is being demolished next week for renovation. So, Opal joined me at the museum.

She was fascinated by her surroundings. She looked at the ancient artifacts, and people looked at her. She was treated like a new work of art.

While I talked, she chortled happily. Museums are cozy, she said. Then she took a nap. Luckily for me, unlike my hen, the audience stayed awake for my presentation.

I’m booking now for talks to Garden Clubs through 2015. Contact me if interested!

Even when winter brings a deep freeze, most chickens will do fine. They have upwards of 10,000 feathers. The downy ones provide insulation and the harder, tighter outer feathers provide protection from wind, rain and snow. As long as the hens have shelter that is dry and draft free, they’ll be plenty warm. You might be worry about those areas not covered by feathers. There’s a risk, but with proper management, it’s not big. Although there’s no insulation in these chicken feet, and yet Twiggy and the other hens are able to walk on the frozen ground.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, birds rarely get frostbite in their feet. This is because there is very little fluid in the cells of their legs to freeze, and because their blood circulates so fast back into warmer parts of the body that what is there doesn’t have time to freeze. They don’t need insulating feathers on their feet to stay warm. In fact, I think that my Cochin, Pearl, has the coldest feet of the lot because her feathers get muddy and then icy. She also doesn’t have those protective hard outer feathers. It’s important to have dry housing for Cochins.

That said, chickens forced to stand on ice all day will get frostbite in their toes. Your hens must spend most of their winter days on dry bedding and on roosts. Given the right options, they’ll keep themselves safe.

Combs are susceptible to frostbite. Chickens like Wyandottes, with their close to the head rose combs are called winter hardy because they have a low risk of damage. Onyx, the Barnevelder, has a small comb that poses no risk of frostbite.

Other hens in my flock, despite larger combs, also weather the weather fine. Their combs go grey and shrink a bit, but this is not frostbite. Misty’s comb is bright red and floppy in the summer, but this is what it looks like now.

Jasper’s tall comb remains red, though it’s a tad smaller than her summer hat.

In twenty years of chicken keeping, I’ve never had a case of frostbite, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. When the air is damp, moisture will cling to combs, then freeze, causing the tips to die. I’ve heard from people who have chickens that have gotten frostbite. In one case, the coop was so well-insulated that the air inside became damp; this was in northern Canada, where it is really, really cold. In that case adding vents to reduce the humidity inside of the barn, and installing a radiant heater (the safest type for a coop, as it doesn’t have coils that can spark a fire) solved the problem. Another coop was further south, but the combination of no ventilation and not enough mucking out of manure caused the problem. That was solved with management, not a heater.

I recently heard from a reader with a perfectly designed coop which is dry and clean. A couple (not all) of her hens got frostbite. This is what frostbite looks like – note that the tips of the comb are black. (The comb is shiny from ointment.)

Frostbite is not a condition to ignore. It can be painful. The dead tips can fall off and become infected. The color change can cause pecking issues amongst hens. Roosters will have a drop in fertility. This hen was treated with bacitracin, and a day later looked much better. (She did get dirt on the sticky stuff, and so the comb looks dark, but that’s not more frostbite.) You can clearly see the typical white tips caused by frostbite.

The question is, why did this hen get frostbite? After much back and forth with her owner, I think that we figured it out. The day that this happened it was blowing which caused the windchill factor to dip so dangerously low that school was delayed. Her hens stayed smartly inside. But, she still had the pop-door open. This hen is low on the pecking order, which means that she was the one delegated to stand closest to the windy opening, and so got frostbite.

If your chicken does get frostbite, bring her in and clean the affected area with a warm saline solution. Blow dry her. Slather with an ointment like bacitracin, or for a natural soother, aloe vera. If she appears to be in pain, you can use an analgesic cream found at your pharmacy. Then, I’d put her right back out with the flock. If the damage is so severe that the others peck at her, then you’ll have to isolate until healed, but be aware that it will be difficult to reintegrate her with the flock later, so it’s not a kindness to keep her inside if you don’t have to. Then, reevaluate your coop. Is it dry? Is it large enough so that all of the hens can be inside and active even during bad weather? Are the hens protected from the wind? In the case illustrated here, you can be sure that on days when the weather service warns about the windchill factor, that the hens will be inside (it’s a lovely coop with big windows) and that pop-door will be closed.

I have sixteen hens, but only one has been producing eggs this winter. I’m not surprised or disappointed by the lack of eggs. It’s expected. Nine hens are in their third year. Late last summer they all molted and are taking a much needed rejuvenating break. Most of them will resume laying by the end of February. Six hens hatched in March of 2013. They too have molted and are restoring their internal supplies of minerals before laying again later this winter. However, one chicken has not ceased laying. Twiggy, the white Leghorn, is the poster girl for a productive hen. Despite the winter weather, the darker days, and her age (almost two), she is laying about four eggs a week. That’s down from her daily egg in the summer, but still! This is why farmers love Leghorns. Those extra eggs can make the difference in the financial survival of a small farm.

I keep the less productive birds simply because I like having them around, which makes yesterday’s bonanza that much more thrilling. Three eggs! One from Twiggy, one from Beatrix, and an egg from one of the Black Stars. When the landscape is white and frozen, those winter eggs are especially welcome and not taken for granted.

So pretty!

The key to this winter bounty? Windows. It’s cloudy and dreary. The wind has been bitter cold. The chickens spend much of their time indoors. But I designed the barns to let light in. As soon as the sun rises, the hens wake up and become busy. They eat. They scratch. They preen. All of that activity during every minute of daylight shortens the winter laying hiatus, and so I have eggs in the basket even when sunset comes early and there’s snow on the ground.

Think about it – sunshine streaming into your house makes you happy, doesn’t it? Your hens feel the same way.