Night Frosts

For the second night, we have below-zero temperatures. Water in buckets outside freezes, and there's frost on the grass. Luckily, we are already heating the stove, so the house is warm. I let the three-month-old chicks out an hour later, when the ground has warmed up a bit in the sun and the frost has disappeared. I don't want the young ones to get sick.

I have been raising chickens and ducks on my own for three years now, and I have found that the very last, late young ones grow the slowest and are the weakest. The strongest chicks are the March and April ones that hatch in the first weeks after the snow melts.