Should I heat my coop at night?

[Rose the Legbar]

This is my first year with chickens so I may be just a very nervous chicken mama, but I’d like advice.
All my chickens have started molting and it is getting to roughly 20°F at night. I have two wyandottes that are going strong and their neck feathers have started to grow back, but my two legbars just are dropping their feathers. The legbars have no neck feathers (but they have a ton of long pin feathers) and they both are recovering from things. One had a crop impaction that took weeks to clear and she was left very underweight, and still is kinda underweight. And the other one has (what I am preeeety sure) is a tumor behind her eye that is slowly growing and pushing her eye out. I’ve witnessed both of my legbars sitting there and shivering from the cold while the wyandottes were still, puffed up but strutting around and being big bullies. So I then hooked up their old plate brooder that can turn into a heater and put it into their coop. There is little risk of fire as I am using sand because that one legbar loved to eat the pine shavings, so I don’t worry about that.
When I went out to check on them to see if they were okay with the brooder and it seemed they enjoyed it as they perched closer to it.

So, should I keep it in there at nights until it either gets warmer or until the legbars fully grow in their feathers? Should I take it out entirely?

 

[nuthatched]

As long as they can get out of the wind, they're fine, 20 is nothing.

 

[Rmgheris]

I’d leave it in there. If they get hot they’ll move away from it. Especially if they are having issues regarding their health. But you are their chicken mama and I would go with your gut feeling.

 

[Poultrybonkers]

Id remove it before they become dependant on it then if power goes out they will die of shock

 

[Rmgheris]

Id remove it before they become dependant on it then if power goes out they will die of shock

Good point. I forgot about the high winds.