We’ve all experienced it or are about to… the Arctic Blast / Polar Vortex / Whatever you want to call it. Yesterday (Wednesday) I was out preparing the horses around 4:55pm, putting blankets on, bedding shelters, etc. and in a span of 30 seconds, I went from comfortable to downright cold. Only to find out after I went in the house and checked my personal weather station app (we have a weather station on the house) to discover in the span of one hour, we went from 39° and nice to -1° with 25mph meaning it’s -25° with the windchill.

Everything went downhill from there.

TLDR: I survived (-ish), my horses survived, my dogs refuse to poop because that requires going outside.

I have never experienced weather like this. I definitely have never experienced keeping horses (and chickens) in weather like this. They were anticipating it to hit -50°F with windchill.

Preparations included:

• Panic,
• Making part of the hay barn into a temporary horse pen *in case* the horses couldn’t handle being outside and I needed to bring all 4 in (I only have 2 stalls),
• Filling waterers and making sure heaters were plugged in,
• Bedding shelters with straw to help insulate feet and bodies from the ground,
• Putting SO MUCH HAY out for the horses in normal feeders and loose in the shelter to entice them to chill (HA!) in the shelter,
• Blanket and double blanket all horses, plus a hood on each one,
• Order all the rechargeable heated things I could from Amazon (socks, neck cowl with hat are all I ended up getting and they are working out GREAT),
• Add table salt to their normal grain rations, turn said normal grain into a warm soupy mash with some alfalfa/timothy pellets (they normally eat timothy hay so this is within normal diet and not a shock to the digestive system),
• Bring food into chicken coop,
• Make sure heated waterer was raging hot,
• Make sure chicken radiant heater was on high and pumping heat before the cold started,
• Block light sensor on chicken coop door to ensure it stayed closed all day today,
• Make sure new electric heated things were charged,
• Make sure farm vehicles were plugged in to be useable when needed,
• Panic some more.

After the weather REALLY blew in and the horses were in it for a bit (so like 8pm), I went to check on the horses in the shelter plus deliver more hay because PANIC and couldn’t believe WHAT A DIFFERENCE the shelter made in temp. VS being out where it was windy. That immediately eased my panic a little. Especially since all the horses were being well-behaved and hanging/eating in their shelters. I was also REALLY concerned the water was going to freeze even though I use high-powered heaters, and they were warm and steaming! Good golly did that ease my mind. So that changed my initial plan of checking things every 1-2 hours, into doing one last check at midnight and then actually sleeping for a few hours. Midnight rolls around, check horses, hay, and water and all is still great. Off to bed I go!

This morning (Thursday) I wake up around 6:20am to make sure the chicken coop stayed closed, look at horses from afar, start soaking warm mash, drink coffee. All looked good, eased panic even more!

Finally, get mash soaked enough to feed, went to feed and the horses were nice and toasty under their blankets! Water was still warm and steaming. I felt 9 million lbs fall off my shoulders. I was truly expecting the water to have frozen at some point because the weather overpowered the heaters and the horses to be cold or the hay to be gone, etc. But apparently, horses cannot eat 500 tons of hay in one night LOL.

I didn’t even need to feed hay for breakfast! Lunchtime rolls around, top off waterers since tonight will also be subzero and miserable, give hay in their slow feeders, and took the hoods off since they were nice and warm.

Just need to get through tonight (currently -13°F with a windchill of -25°F at 7pm) and then things start swinging in the right direction weather wise tomorrow, late morning.

Lesson learned, no need to panic. I was plenty prepared and am now confident I can take care of the animals in just about anything Colorado has to throw at me. And since this is a *once-in-a-lifetime weather event* I doubt I will ever see anything this crazy again in my life!

However, *knock on wood* because it would be just my luck Colorado does this again every year just because it can and I got cocky.