Batten down the hatches

It does rather look like it! What's she been eating though, to have such a dreadful case of wind? :-)
 
O M G no wonder our human is busy putting planters in safe corners.
Plan A girls, sit in big coop all day and insist on food being brought in, if we can manage a terrified look we could get extra treats.
Stay safe everyone, fingers crossed
 
OH and I are awaiting the aftermath of this storm, so we can gather more wood for the wood burner from the fallen trees in the woods. Good to stock up whilst you can ;-) I bought him a Greenworks battery operated chainsaw last year for his Birthday. Hardly makes any noise, therefore doesn't attract attention and cuts amazingly well, even 10 inch diameter trees.
 
Tweetypie: please, please don't let him cut anything that's still attached to a wind blown tree. The tension & compression in the tree can be really dangerous...

I'm qualified to cut down trees up to 38cm in diameter but tackling trees blown over by the wind is a whole different ballgame and still well beyond my qualifications. Until I started training, I never realised...
 
Oh, how I do hate these storms! We have an "orange" warning in place, and it's quite fierce out there since yesterday. I've not let the hens out of the run this morning, although they usually prefer to go out, and hunker down in a low lying corner of the pen, but tbh, I haven't stuck my nose outside the door yet. I'm in two minds about whether to let them out at all or not.
I hate it, but I do know I've a lot to be thankful for. My house is warm and dry, and I don't actually have to go anywhere today. For the next few days, they are forecasting bitter cold with "significant" wind chill, which I'm not looking forward to at all!
 
Icemaiden - we only take the fallen ones, usually useless trunks left by the foresters with no purpose for BT or wood Companies, been doing it for years. Won't be doing it until the weather is nice and calm again :-)

Its really windy, the girls are sat under their coop. Might treat them to some warm scrambled egg later to cheer them up.
Hope there's no serious accidents today around the globe.

OMG just editing my post. The lovely tree that shades the corner of the run has snapped and fallen over. Luckily missed the coop by 2 foot :o Poor girls, bet that frightened them. Actually the tree was a rotten dead damson, but was covered in ivy, so always shaded that area and looked beautiful. OH gone out in the storm to remove it. Before and after, such a pity.
 

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OMG lucky escape for your girls, but scary. Ours are in the big coop, they were slightly upset not to be let out then the huge gusts started and one went into orbit and ended up against the wire, and decided indoors is fine. But did find a large piece of metal of sheeting on the lawn from somewhere, which could have caused a nasty injury if I had been out at the time.
The noise is terrible, and the electric wires are holding at the moment
Locally the Cliffs Pavilion at Southend has lost part of it's roof.
it is quite scary on a double decker bus at the moment I can tell you.
 
Winds starting to die down now to 40mph gusts. Hens coops and runs all ok, a few of the new girls got freaked out and took themselves into the laying boxes for the day.
No trees down as yet, our neighbour lost 15ft of a cow shed roof, so a rush to move cows and calves to another luckily empty area with just straw stacked at one end.
I had quite a peaceful day as most people resisted the urge to go shopping and stayed indoors.
Hope everyone else came through it unscathed, especially any Welsh members, you really seemed to have got the lot with the wind and torrential rain
 
The main event here was at about 2:00pm when it got pretty dramatic for 10 mins with a howling gale and enough rain to flood the garden. Blew my scaffold plank over that was leaning against the wall (silly place to leave it really!) But that was all - chickens hunkered down in the corner of the run but soon got over it for some scratch. This evening, after dark, the moon was up and it looked like everything was shining and blasted clean!
moonlight1.jpeg
 
Look at that menacing sky!

Died down here now, it's just raining. Had some hailstones this afternoon and local road floods, luckily I live half way up a hill;-)
 
Still very windy here. We had some hail showers yesterday evening, and there's a yellow "snow and ice" warning for the entire country. Where I am though, we don't even have a hint of frost. The wind chill is strong though. A real "bite" in the wind.
 
Awesome pic Rick, looks very end of the world.
Did hear a good conversation yesterday. One woman saying to her friend. "well we usually have a roast Sunday, but we could get power cuts so I have brought some microwave ready meals to use if the power is off"
Wonder how her microwave works ?
 
Several years ago we found ourselves, as of Christmas Eve, unexpectedly at home for Christmas but with no electricity due to very high winds. Cue a last minute visit to Sainsbury's for a Christmas dinner that could be cooked on just a gas hob... Thank heavens for dual fuel cookers; at least the gas rings still work in a power cut if you've got a box of matches.

Heaven help us when they ban natural gas & log burners. It's all well & good if you're a politician snuggled up in London but if you're in the countryside in a power cut, you need viable alternatives...

Please excuse me while I climb down from my soapbox- it's still windy up here!
 
Been pretty bad here the last few days. I can hardly stand up in the wind, it's so strong. Luckily not many trees here so none to fall across roads. The girls are little stars, dash out every morning, eat their grub then go foraging in the shrubbery, which is sheltered from the SW winds at their level, bless 'em. Had a huge egg yesterday, 97 grammes, about the size of a duck egg. No idea who laid it as they all lay the same colour eggs, which I wasn't expecting. Thought they laid different colours.
 
Quite agree Icemaiden we often get power cuts and thank heavens for the gas hob, once we didn't have electricity for 3 days. Our neighbour has a wood burner so we can go there for a warm up. All very well for these people who live in nice towns with all the power lines underground.
Still windy with 40mph + gusts should die down about 2pm, then I see we are due for another storm Saturday. February is often the worst month for bad weather.
Our girls have been stars, didn't let them out Sunday, but yesterday they quickly got to a sunny sheltered spot for a well earned dust bathe and doze in the sun, same today. They were selling melons off cheap in the local supermarket and they are outside tucking in
 
We have no gas here and Im only half a mile from the centre of a small town (don't have mains drainage either). I have a woodburner and a single picnic gas ring - the sort that runs off the aerosol can. Means I can boil a kettle and with the pressure cooker I can cook a complete meal on that Oil fired heating and hot water but of course I lose the ignition and the pump!

Keeping cats in as much as possible; one is supposed to be confined anyway so her femur will heal, another had a huge abscess which is healing so won't to try and prevent infection. The other two I will let out and they can come back in through the catflap - works on microchip and it's set to "IN" only. None of them are keen on staying out for long anyway. A friend locally had three hen houses blow over and another just broke up - the free ranging hens were sensibly sheltering in the open fronted stone barn so they are OK.
 
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