Every time it snows, I go out into the backyard and make some trails in the snow for the chickens. They won't go into deep snow. As long as they can see some grass/dirt, then they'll walk around in the snow. These are from two different snowfalls in January.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PD...=w1112-h625-no
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vQ...=w1112-h625-no
This last blizzard I made varying widths of paths, some more narrow than the body of the chickens, just to see if they'd use them. I accidentally conducted a bit of a "Let's watch a chicken solve a maze to get to food" experiment. Under no incitement of food, they just wander around and pluck at the grass. In that situation I saw one walking down a path that was wide enough for her feet, but more narrow than her body. Well, they all know the sound of the corn bag (corn is basically empty calorie junk food for chickens). When I got into that corn bag, they all jumped up from various parts around the yard to see what I was doing and one was in the coop pretending to lay an egg. I took the corn to the compost at the far end of the yard and two chickens were on the opposite side of the yard. The one that was walking down the skinny path made it into the garden and was only ten feet from the corn pile, but it took her a few minutes to figure out that she could walk on the dry wood of the garden structure to get to the corn. The one that came running out of the coop ran into the yard, saw the maze structure in front of her and decided that she didn't have time to figure it out so she just jumped straight up and flew to the furthest dry spot she could manage, then hopped right into the corn; beating the garden chicken by a full minute. None of the other chickens are as smart or have as much personality as the one that flew. I just wish she'd lay an egg already, it's been over a year now. She probably never will.
