The arctic weather that is hitting everyone is making it’s way here today. It was 61 degrees this morning and windy. I wore pants and a shirt to milk and was a little warm. By 10am it’s supposed to be 40 and by tonight it’s 12 to 8 degrees depending on who’s forecast you watch. 8 degrees is Wisconsin cold. It’s cold that I don’t like to see. It’s hard on the animals and hard on the facilities. We’ve managed to not have any issues with the cow waterer this winter, even with the freezes. The water hose freezes at night, but then thaws during the day and the cows get all their water like normal. However tonight it’s going to freeze hard, then not get above freezing all day tomorrow so there is no opportunity for the cows to get their water. It looks like we’ll be unhooking the water hose and draining it, then hooking it up to fill the trough, then unhooking and draining again. A lot of labor for water. This is all if we can even drain it properly. If not, it’ll be buckets of water to fill the water trough, meaning even more labor. Fortunately trough itself doesn’t freeze so we can water throughout the day.
Speaking of freezing, the pig waterer froze Saturday and broke in two places. We’ve switched to an alternate waterer. Pigs don’t drink much water anyway, especially since they have two pallets of watermelons to eat. That should keep them well hydrated through this cold spell.
Looks like it’ll be a day and night of stoking the boiler to keep the heat going. 8 degrees is a new low for the boiler so this should be a good test. I know the boiler will keep up. The question is will the wood and the stoker.