It made international news, I think, our gargantuan snowstorm. For us it wasn’t too big of a deal. Inconvenient, yes. Life-threatening, no. I stopped measuring snow at 11 inches in our pasture; and the cumulative snowfall was a lot more than that, because it was melting some each day. That’s the funny thing about around here: most of the time when it snows, it’s not even freezing, at least during the day. Over a foot of snow is a lot for this area; I think we set a record for something like on-the-day-of-January-18th.
But it’s not very impressive to people who live with snow all winter. A week of difficult roads, limited travel, some power outages, and harder work on the farm, and then it’s over, probably for the season. Here are some images from our big week of snow.
Snow-laden ex-Christmas tree.
The drainage ditches, topped off in slush.
Good news for collies, a new element to their pasture runs.
Catching snowballs.
The guardian dogs seem perfectly at home in the snow. I bolstered their dog houses with mounds of fresh straw, but they spent little time in them. They spent a lot of time wrestling, however. Moses looks a little victimized here, but he’ll get revenge on Bronte a minute later. They always remind me of bears when they play, it’s so rough.
You can see why she has earned the nickname Big Bird- always smiling her big, dumb, cheerful smile, breathing hot breath in my face (she’s not that much shorter than I am).
Moses, maintaining vigilance at the boundaries of his pasture.
The ruminants are hardy in cold. We may cringe to see them standing out in snow, but the truth is, they are so insulated by their wool, that little heat escapes to even melt the snow on their backs. You would think Llama would find the weight of this snow blanket irritating enough to shake it off, but I guess not.
Ruminants have a huge bacterial fermentation vat inside their guts. Their digestive action produces a lot of heat. When it’s cold outside, they merely need to eat more, and they stay plenty warm. All of the animals look wet on the surface, but if you stick your fingers down into their coats, they are dry at the skin.
The sheep don’t prefer to walk in deep snow; prey animals know they are vulnerable when they don’t have good footing. They tend to make a single-file trail and they all follow it. Here they are making a stop at the mineral feeder, and then the water troughs after eating their morning hay.
The water troughs weren’t frozen most mornings when I kicked my boot in them to clear them, but they accumulated a frosting layer of snow within hours. This does not fool the sheep though, one of their rare areas of intelligence is finding food and water beneath snow. Here you can see the nose holes they’ve made for drinking. They also know how to eat snow, and often opt for that rather than making the trek to the water tanks.
If you aren’t tall enough to reach the common nose hole, then stepping a foot into the water tank can help…
Or, if you are a petite Jacob cross ewelamb, you can get your whole self into the water tank and paw at the snow with your hooves….
We don’t have new-fangled frost-free faucets in the pasture yet, that’s a project for another summer. So, when the garden hoses freeze, I have to haul water in buckets. In past years, I filled them at the house’s hose bib. Or, if that was frozen, I’d have to fill the muddy buckets in the bathtub in the house.
So this year felt like a luxury to fill them with scalding water in the new barn sink.
Three buckets fit in the ATV rack, so it takes several trips to the pasture to fill the stock tanks to last for several days.
In the evenings, there was a most beautiful blue cast to the landscape. I managed to capture it fairly well with my camera, though the sheep’s movements are blurry due to the low light.
Single file line back to the hay row where they will bed down for the night on the remnants of their dinner.
January 22, 2012 at 5:30 am
How do you keep your guardian dogs inside that fence? We have an akbashXmaremma and at about 9 months, he figured out he could jump over and we’ve had a heck of a time ever since (he’s almost 4 years old now).
January 22, 2012 at 5:35 am
Your pictures are wonderful. Here in Idaho it has been so windy that it pushed me down to the barn, grabbing the fence as I go. If it keeps up perhaps I will have to a hook on the fence and move it along as I go.
The sheep don’t seem to mind the wind it blows their wool in wonderful directions, getting out some of the VM.
The pictures you have of the holes in the water tanks I particularly like, I’ve seen that before.
Stay Warm, Elayne
January 22, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Andrea, it’s true our LGDs could easily jump over the fences, they just don’t. But I know a lot of people who have had that problem. I think habit is the #1 name of the game, trying to make sure they never learn the wrong habit.
If they’ve never been off the property, they don’t think of it. So if you can physically prevent them from doing it for a long time (a couple of years), they often stop considering any other way. I once adopted a rescue border collie that came with terrible wanderlust, and I lost him several times early on. But after a couple of years passed where I carefully controlled his movements, he just lost the notion and I never had to worry about it again.
I had one border collie pup that would jump out of ex pens and dog shows at first; so I always tied her up on a stake inside the ex pen, for a year or two. Now she’s highly reliable about staying in.
When they do get out, if you can make the experience negative, that can help. I’ve left the gate open and caught our Maremma sneaking around a few times, and I’ve chased her with our ATV (out of necessity- I can’t catch her when she’s in that sneaky mode). That frightens her, and she runs back to the security of her zone and her sheep. Then I leave her alone, so she associates being out with fear, being back in the pasture with relief and safety.
Temperament is a key component, if it is a keen, active dog that’s going to get bored in the pasture, it’s more likely to seek wider horizons. If you have a dog like that, attempting to keep the pasture interesting (with bones to chew, toys, hidden treats, or whatever is interesting to the dog) may help. Our Maremma is a very active, curious dog, always digging for moles and doing stuff in the pasture like a busy bee. This concerns me a bit, I do not think it’s a desirable trait in an LGD. Ideally, they should just lay around and bark at strangers, but not be motivated to do more than that. I think the main thing that keeps our dog in is that she’s timid, so she’s fairly afraid of what’s out there and feels safe in her pasture. Our Kuvasz is very mellow, and also doesn’t see well, so I think he’s happy to just stay where things are familiar and safe.
Neutering is probably another big component- for males that won’t be bred, I think neutering very early is ideal. Your mention of the magic age of 9 months makes me think when he started to hit sexual maturity, he was motivated to expand his horizons? Or perhaps seek out a neighbor with a bitch in heat he could smell? Neutering always helps, even late in life, so if you haven’t done it yet, I would definitely start there. You probably don’t want to breed a dog with wanderlust anyway, since it’s likely an inherited trait.
If your dog has had four years of positive reinforcement with the fun of getting out, it may be too late to correct the behavior. You might just have to resort to physical prevention- hotwire top & bottom, invisible fence, or make him drag an object on a chain that prevents him from going over or under. Maybe if you could get a couple of years in where he couldn’t escape, you could re-condition him, and then he’d be more mature and maybe not so motivated to wander anymore.
January 22, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Elayne, it reminds me of a tidbit I’ve always remembered from the Laura Ingalls Wilder series- that “Pa” had tied a rope from the house to the barn, to follow so he wouldn’t get lost in a blizzard, because visibility was so poor when it snowed hard, it was literally possible to get disoriented and freeze to death in your own yard. It makes our Seattle snows seem so benign in comparison! But you guys maybe see snow like that sometimes? I remember a couple serious snow storms from when I went to WSU.
January 22, 2012 at 6:17 pm
CF, I can’t help but think you blog is partly to blame for our “gargantuan” snow event; it has been snowing on your site for at least two months–even the summer scene wasn’t enough to melt the flakes. In time one snowflake upon another equals a snowbank, you know. Eleven inches? Credit your blog for at least four of those!
Accumulation here in our Valley tallied eight inches, excepting that which melted, of course. My exercise routine shifted to the snow shovel and push broom, taking the weight off our shed carport, knocking the heavy stuff off the hedges, and doing battle with DOT plows that birmed our driveway entrance several times. Other than shoveling/sweeping and the occasional trip to the wood shed, we spent the time by the woodstove watching the snow sift down, being entertained by the flocks of birds at the feeders, and the cat watching the flocks of birds at the feeders. (We have an Anna’s hummingbird on the property. It came to the seed feeder and the wind chimes, so I hauled the syrup feeder out of storage, filled it and put it out. The little gal started feeding soon after. Strange it was to see that little mite of a bird perched on a snowladen twig instead of flitting about in the honeysuckle and crocosmia.)
We did lose power twice, however: eight hours one night, ten the next day…problematic because we are on a well. I had the foresight to fill several buckets of water so we could keep flushed. But foresight was blind: I set the buckets out on the deck and when the water was needed, it came in the form of an ice cylinder!
Another thing I missed because of the power outage: lying warm abed, listening to the school closure lists, anxiously waiting for the broadcast to trickle down the alphabet until the S’s: “Snohomish School District closed.” Ah, sweet nostalgia! TMJ
January 25, 2012 at 5:38 am
LOL, TMJ, maybe next year I will turn off the snow on my blog… My mom said she has one hummer this winter as well, so amazing to think those little frames can stay warm in this weather. I definitely notice our chicken feed consumption rise when it snows- from all those starlings taking advantage!
I can’t believe that you enjoyed school cancellation- surely you agonized over us missing a day of tutelage? 😀