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I should only keep small combed roosters but sometimes I like breeds like barnevelder and Orpingtons. All my roosters do okay after frostbite. I just leave them be to heal up.

These are my two buff Orpington roosters. The one in back is going on 5 and the front one is 2. You can see that they have both been "dubbed" by frostbite. Yours will probably lose all their points too. Mine have also lost some wattle tissue too. Unfortunately with really cold temperatures...

She looks like a frizzle, a frazzle is over curly and the feathers break off easily, but yet she doesn't quite look right. My avatar shows one of my frizzled hens. Yours looks bright eyed and healthy otherwise. I probably would just leave her in the coop. If the silkies are fine, she is too. My...

Generally frizzles don't have missing feathers unless they are over mated by a rooster or picked on, which makes me wonder if she's a frazzle instead. The actual temperature doesn't seem to matter as much as the large shifts in temperatures which can stress birds out and cause them to look...

We get to -20 and my frizzles do fine. Your weather is considered balmy to us. I use hay because they can also forage through it. Frizzle cochins are tender hearted and can be bullied easily. Glad you gave her a better home with more compatible birds.

I have muscovy ducks. They make a mess. I use black rubber pans of various sizes. Mine crawl into them to take baths almost daily, otherwise they are trying to crawl into my rubber water buckets. I think you would be okay just giving them smaller containers of water to mess around in. Years ago...

Our tank heater in our stock tank uses lots of electricity. We have put ours on a timer so it doesn't run all day which cuts down some of the electric bill pain. I would worry about ducks getting burned on the element even with a cage around one, so I don't think they are a good option for ducks.

weather fluctuations and storms will cause stress and halts in production throughout the season. First year layers will lay pretty consistently, production will begin to ramp up in March and April, so expect your best production during early spring and into the beginning of summer.

You would be better off without any light than leaving them on 24 hours a day. I get decent enough production through winter without supplementing light. The length of daylight begins to increase about December 22, so unless you have a need for high production I don't think it's worth messing...

I actually enjoy our climate here as I'm cold blooded. I do smile a bit when I read of folks saying their temperatures are down to the 20-30's, which for us is a warm balmy day. Chickens do have more problems in hot weather than cold.

Here in Wisconsin, we routinely stay in the below zero to teens area for temperature throughout January and February. We also will dip into the -20's with -40 wind chills, at least once during winter and often multiple times. We never provide heat, to the contrary we never close our shed up and...

No I don't see anything like that, but I do have a large shed. I either use the buckets, or the pans are set up on bricks, so the drinking surface is about chest height, we dump and smash the ice out twice a day and replace with warm water. I also feed out of pans too.

I've used rubber buckets and bowl for many years. Hens are okay, but roosters can get some frostbite on the wattles. They don't make a mess, the ducks do a bit, but the chickens don't.

Moisture collects in the roof line, in winter it can cause frostbite, as well as chickens can sustain leg injuries flying down from high roosts, that being said some of mine manager to get up in the rafters of my shed which is 20 feet up.

We started to build the bantams hay bale tunnel to keep wind and snow from blowing in the pophole, and so it doesn't have to be closed every night, they are already enjoying it.

Chickens don't heat their coop or each other. They keep themselves warm, so it doesn't matter if you have one or a hundred they should be fine without heat. It's more important to have appropriate roosts and ventilation, and to block any drafts and the prevailing winds.

Most animals are more hardy than humans give credit to. They have feathers and fur, we are naked and often cold in anything under 50 degrees, so we put our feelings onto the critters we keep. Nature provides them with a coat that if not messed with with thicken and grow for the climate they...

I use rubber bucket and bowls for water. Knock them out twice a day and replace with warm water. Mine get slabs of hay to provide greens and something to stand on outside over the snow. No extra heat ever provided, chickens go outside most every day. Collect eggs often before they freeze...