Along with much of the East Coast, we just endured a record-breaking snowstorm. When you live on a homestead with livestock, weather is a big deal. The livestock need to be cared for every day, and that means getting to them, and making sure they can get around, no matter what the weather. As we come out the other side of this storm, we reflect on what went well and what needs improvement.
Overall, we made it through the snowstorm relatively unscathed. The structures and pens we have in place for the animals mostly worked just fine. The chicken coop/rabbitry structure is very sturdy, and nothing hurts it.
The pigs and their hoophouse
All but one of our hoophouses also did just fine in the snow. (More on the hoophouse that failed later).
Our tractor was up to the task of clearing the snow, thankfully. Chains for the tires were key! It was so difficult to walk in the snow to get to the animal pens, Harley ended up plowing walking paths for us, too.
Powed path to the goat pen
Having those plowed paths saved a lot of time and effort when feeding the animals!
The house was great overall, with one heating issue. The electric heat for our main level wasn’t working. It brought to mind the adage “one is none, two is one…” as fortunately we have several layers to our home heating setup, so the failure of one level was easily compensated for by the others. Our upstairs heat still worked just fine, and on the main level we have a wood stove that supplied plenty of heat. Insulated curtains helped keep that heat in and the cold out.
Our homestead was not designed to withstand three feet of snow. This was a record snowfall, and not within the realm of “normal” for our area, so there were a few things that failed.
The goat house pre-collapse
Our goat hoophouse collapsed under the weight of the snow. Thankfully the goats were just fine. I think this hoophouse failed where others didn’t because it was our first hoophouse, and we corrected weaknesses we saw in it when building subsequent hoophouses. It’s the widest hoophouse we’ve made, and being so wide I think the panels forming the arch lost some of their structural strength. The cattle panels we used to build the hoophouse were a bit bent initially, too, so they didn’t form a perfect hoop. That again weakened the structure. We’ve also moved this house a few times, and that left it a little tweaked.
Since constructing this hoophouse, we’ve already addressed these issues by making hoophouses that’re smaller, and using cattle panels that are in better condition. You can see the improvements in this picture of a hoophouse from over the summer.
Another unexpected challenge was that all our feed and water dishes that sit on the ground were lost in the snow between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. It’s unusual for us to get so much snow so quickly, so we weren’t anticipating this problem. Fortunately, we had a bunch of extra dishes in the shed, which we utilized. In the future, I’d setup covered feeding and watering areas using extra shelters. This would keep the dishes from getting covered and give the animals more protected space to be during the storm.
One of our simple structures such as this shelter would have been perfect for sheltering a feeding and watering station. This is just one situation that highlights the usefulness of having some extra shelters on hand. We have found having more shelters than we think we need has come in handy many times!
Another lesson learned is never expect that the animals will work for food. In the picture above, you can see that the goats ventured from their houses to the feedstand in order to get grain. Goats LOVE grain. It’s like a drug to them, and they’ll do anything for it. But you see that snow covered hay bale in the picture? The hay that goats need to eat daily for their health, and that helps their rumens keep them warm in cold weather? They were unwilling to walk through the snow to get hay. I had to shovel a path for them to the hay bale, and then they’d eat the hay. So in the future, I’d keep that in mind and maybe have the hay bale a bit closer to their houses.
Overall, we are pretty happy with how the homestead handled the storm. We have also learned some lessons that we’ll keep in mind for the next snowstorm!
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