Death of a Hen

Sad day. We had about 3" of snow overnight but it must have stopped snowing quite early and the plough has been up and down. The road is clear and Gordon managed to pick Paul up and take him through, just 3 more days now!!Such a relief when the driver picks him up. The sky is so snow laden its hard to tell where the fell ends and the sky begins. I dug out everywhere again today, when I got down to the hen run there was a dead hen buried in the snow outside the pophole. At first I thought it was a goldline and when I got into the house and couldnt find the whitestar who is heavily in the moult I thought I had lost 2. I went back with clean water and saw all the goldline were back so its was just the whitestar after all. She must have frozen as she didnt have many feathers and was down to 'chicken skin'. So sad. The others look quite well, but fed up with being cooped up. I added some more shavings to the droppings board and put some more on the floor to try to ckean up the shed a bit. I added some more staw to the nest boxes as well. We managed one egg today. I am conserving diesel in the RAV as I havent got too much, so Barney will have to content himself with a run round the garden today, if the weather closes in while Paul is at James Cook I might have to venture out and rescue him. It looks like it might snow heavily and I dont want to be caught out at Stanhope. Beef fajitas and rice pudding for tea tonight!! I opened a tin of evaporated milk by mistake yesterday so I will have to use it up today!! Such a relief not to have to think about school, when I went to post my certificate yesterday I saw the Allenhead road was closed. This weather is set to go on for at least another fortnight! It really is like winters from times past, except the gritting and central heating is better. It must have been so hard before they were well established.