spring chickens
I don't feel completely confident assessing their mental state, but it might be that the creatures happiest about the warmer weather at our house are the chickens. Some chickens walk on snow; ours do not, so for the last month plus they've been confined to their coop and enclosed run (which I spiffed up with a snow-shedding roof last summer). But over the last two weeks the snowless expanse has been slowly growing towards their front door, and early this week they finally had a snow-free pathway out into the yard. They appear delighted with their freedom.
peck peck, peck peck, peck peck
They show their delight early every morning, which has been a little annoying, since the way they show it is by making lots of noise before I'm necessarily ready to be getting out of bed. At least that's one good thing about the upcoming time change: Sunday morning they'll be making all that racket at 6:30 instead of 5:30! And I can't begrudge them the noise too much, because the extra sunlight means that egg production has ramped back up almost to summer levels. No more buying eggs for us until next winter! (or until we need to have a big brunch...).
one days' haul
My only concern is that we still haven't figured out how the hens and the dogs can share the yard. Right now they can't; the dogs will try and kill the hens if they're out together. So that's a little stressful. Something to work on this spring.