Chickens On Ice!

Well, winter will soon be upon us...and we'll have the annual first discovery of ice and snow by this year's lil' hatchlings.  I was looking through some photos from a few years ago and ran across some of wintertime chicken consternation...and chicken ice skating!

It was in November and we'd gotten a pretty hard freeze and a light dusting of snow overnight when we went out in the morning to let the chickens out of their cozy coop...

Their water dish was frozen over.

This called for lots of staring and clucking, while Linc went right to the root of the problem and went ice skating.

...which called for even more freaked-out staring and alarmed cackling.

Alas, no amount of concentrated staring was gonna crack that ice.  The pecking wasn't cutting it, either.  Meanwhile, Linc was having a grand time playing Chicken Jesus and walking on (frozen) water.

Finally the humans, who had come prepared, poured warm water over the ice and busted it up with a shovel handle.  Yay!

This didn't stop Zip from going wading, and playing with floating ice chips is big chicken fun, let me tell you.

But at least it broke up the staring crew.