A Chicken Walking on Water

The weather was cold this morning when I let the chickens out for some exercise. Water had frozen in their water dish. I put some whey (left over from making ricotta cheese) into one water dish and fresh water in the other dish. As I worked I saw Meredith walk over to the pond. I have a small plastic pond in the back yard. It's about 3 feet deep and I grow water hyacinth in the summer. Last month I made the pond ready for winter by tying a rope to a brick and the other end of the rope to a milk jug partially filled with sand. The weight of the sand keeps the jug semi-submerged in the water. This allows the expansion of the ice to crush the milk jug instead of cracking the plastic of my pond. Meredith stood on the limestone rocks to get a drink. I could hear her beak click at the ice. I wondered if that hurt as she unexpectedly hit a hard icy surface with her beak instead of the water she was expecting. I walked over there to get a better view of this. Meredith tried pecking at the ice at another spot before she put one foot tentatively on the ice. She walked across the pond to where the milk jug sat. There was a tiny rim of open water next to the jug. As she walked, the ice cap on the pond tilted down on her side. Ice came up to her left and water poured in around her ankles. She looked down. I think she was confused by the icy foot bath. She just stood there as the water got deeper and deeper. Can chickens swim? I wasn't sure and I didn't want to have to rescue Meredith from this cold water. I yelled, "Meredith! I don't think you can swim!" She became alarmed at my yelling and tried to scoot back to shore. Her blue-green feet slipped on the ice twice before she flew up and over the rocks back to safety on the grass. She walked over to the water dish with the whey and drank that. I think all the chickens enjoy drinking the whey. Overall the chickens are doing good lately. On Thanksgiving Day we collected 4 eggs. I had picked out two in the morning and the kids found 2 more in the afternoon. That was the first day I ever got more than 2 eggs in a single day. On Friday I found 2 eggs. This morning I found 4 eggs in the coop. Egg production is up lately. Let me know if you need some.