Tips From Nutrena: The Heat is On, But is heating the coop really necessary in winter?

I am also in Utah and no your chickens do not need heat. They did not get any heat inside the coop. But I did have a heater for the water that was out side of the coop. Worked great never froze. And I would let them out if they want to. Six birds in a 4x4 coop and they might get stir crazy and pick out each others feathers.

But if you want them to lay in the winter then you need to give them 14 hours of light a day. I just got a very low watt LED bulb. It does not provide any heat and I bet it cost me less than a dollar to run it a year. I have it come on at sun rise of the longest day of the year and stay on for 2 hours and then turns off. Then It comes back on at a half an hours before sunset of the shortest day of the year and then back off a half an hour after sunset of the longest day of the year. So the led bulb only runs about 5-6 hours a day.

Iluvmysilkies said:

I have been wondering about this to. I just got 6 baby silkies and I am not sure what to do this winter with them. Do I need to worry about a heat lamp for silkies? I live in Utah where it gets pretty cold but rarely drops below 0 but it does sometimes.

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They need heat only until they are fully feathered. After that, they have naturally warm "coats".

I think it depends on how cold it is and your coops should be well corked and i use clear plastic rolls on mine to keep the heat in but leaving a small area open like were the vents are and the slot door.

jen.bolduc said:

I think it depends on how cold it is and your coops should be well corked and i use clear plastic rolls on mine to keep the heat in but leaving a small area open like were the vents are and the slot door.

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Unless you have some kind of thinly feathered exotic breed, you DO NOT need to add heat. There are more than a few accounts of chickens living in OPEN air coops, in -40 temps with no problems. Wrapping your coop in plastic, and leaving little slits for ventilation, in the winter, will cause waaaaaaay more problems for the chickens, than a little cold weather.

Utard said:

I am also in Utah and no your chickens do not need heat. They did not get any heat inside the coop. But I did have a heater for the water that was out side of the coop. Worked great never froze. And I would let them out if they want to. Six birds in a 4x4 coop and they might get stir crazy and pick out each others feathers.

But if you want them to lay in the winter then you need to give them 14 hours of light a day. I just got a very low watt LED bulb. It does not provide any heat and I bet it cost me less than a dollar to run it a year. I have it come on at sun rise of the longest day of the year and stay on for 2 hours and then turns off. Then It comes back on at a half an hours before sunset of the shortest day of the year and then back off a half an hour after sunset of the longest day of the year. So the led bulb only runs about 5-6 hours a day.

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JackE said:

Unless you have some kind of thinly feathered exotic breed, you DO NOT need to add heat. There are more than a few accounts of chickens living in OPEN air coops, in -40 temps with no problems. Wrapping your coop in plastic, and leaving little slits for ventilation, in the winter, will cause waaaaaaay more problems for the chickens, than a little cold weather.

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Thanks guys, I have silkies so yes they have a harder time insulating themself with their fur like feathering but I read they are still hardy in winter and should be ok. I just keep getting such mixed messages from ppl who say they still need heat, and that they tried it without and there birds got sick with colds or died. If I still have my chicks come winter then i'll be very attached to them and if I loose any i'll be very sad. I will bring their coop inside our little barn also and that will eliminate any snow/rain collecting on the coop, and any wind yet its still very open so it will be ventilated still. I want to do whatever is best for them. It would be nice not to worry about a fire or anything out there by adding a lamp. I'll add a heater for the water though. And no I dont care about eggs so much in winter. I think it would be a nice break for them to not have to lay any. I just want to make sure they are warm and happy and that none of them will freeze to death.

Iluvmysilkies said:

Thanks guys, I have silkies so yes they have a harder time insulating themself with their fur like feathering but I read they are still hardy in winter and should be ok. I just keep getting such mixed messages from ppl who say they still need heat, and that they tried it without and there birds got sick with colds or died. If I still have my chicks come winter then i'll be very attached to them and if I loose any i'll be very sad. I will bring their coop inside our little barn also and that will eliminate any snow/rain collecting on the coop, and any wind yet its still very open so it will be ventilated still. I want to do whatever is best for them. It would be nice not to worry about a fire or anything out there by adding a lamp. I'll add a heater for the water though. And no I dont care about eggs so much in winter. I think it would be a nice break for them to not have to lay any. I just want to make sure they are warm and happy and that none of them will freeze to death.

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Your profile doesn't say where you live (I see Utah in a prior post, add it to your profile so people won't keep asking ). If you got them as day olds a week ago, yes, they will need heat and a LOT more heat than even those that THINK they need to heat their coops would provide. But that is a different matter, it is called a brooder I presume you've already got this covered or they would be dead by now. If they are already fully feathered babies (like ~4 weeks old) they shouldn't need heat but you could give them access to heat for a while since they aren't acclimating from warm summer through fall into winter but from hot brooder temps into fall temps.

If you are concerned, I suggest you NOT put heat in the coop but create a somewhat enclosed space (to keep the heat in) in the run where you can put a heat lamp. Turn it on when it is cold and see if the birds hang out there. If Silkies are not sufficiently self insulating for 0F in the winter (I have no idea, I have no Silkies), they will go to the heat. But I propose you have a place to hang up the unused heat lamp when you find out the birds not only don't go to it but stay away from it. You are more likely to get sick birds by over insulating and heating without proper ventilation than letting them take care of themselves in a ventilated but NOT DRAFTY unheated coop.

Another thought regarding insulation and vapor barriers. The purpose of a vapor barrier is to keep the water vapor from getting into the insulation (fiberglass, there is foam insulation that is not be damaged by moisture and IS a vapor barrier). What you WANT for your chickens is for the water vapor to GET OUT OF THE COOP. I can't think of a better way to damage the birds' health than to have a high humidity problem in the winter.

I'm sure there are Silkie threads in the forums on BYC, maybe you can find out just how cold tolerant they are in one of them.

Bruce

I have a question we insolated our coop and have a light fixture in it we built it this way because we have a friend who's coop is not insolated. They have issues with frozen eggs when it gets below 20 degrees. This is our first year having chickens and we took what we thought were flaws and tried to make the coop better. If you do not insolate or have any heat do you just toss the frozen eggs? It seems such a waste.

judacious said:

I have a question we insolated our coop and have a light fixture in it we built it this way because we have a friend who's coop is not insolated. They have issues with frozen eggs when it gets below 20 degrees. This is our first year having chickens and we took what we thought were flaws and tried to make the coop better. If you do not insolate or have any heat do you just toss the frozen eggs? It seems such a waste.

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Insulating the coop isn't going to make a whole lot of difference, maybe a few degrees, unless you do heat.

With regard to eggs freezing. I try to go out every couple of hours to collect, clearly not something that can be done if everyone is gone for the day. But I have had eggs that probably froze since it was well below 0F and I hadn't been out for several hours. They were fine, the whites were a little thinner than normal. The only egg I had to toss was one that had frozen so hard the shell cracked and spread but the membrane wasn't damaged. I thought it was nice of Yue to mark her egg with a Y shaped crack! It was likely laid late and had a good 14+ hours to freeze overnight. I put it in the fridge and the crack was hard to find once it thawed. But when I cracked the egg open, the yolk was the consistency of that in a nearly hard boiled egg. I was making omelets so I used the white and tossed the yolk.

Not guaranteed and tested science but if the shell isn't cracked, I wouldn't worry about it at all. And if you have several birds laying in the same nest, birds that lay after the first will warm up the earlier laid eggs. In any case, the mere fact that an egg froze doesn't make them 'bad' or 'dangerous'. There is a thread on freezing eggs for later use somewhere.

Bruce

I had some issues with eggs freezing when it was extremely cold this winter. I am not going to heat my coop because of it though I may do something with the nest boxes