Winter is Coming! Checklists, tips, advice for a newbie

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Jalen: I noted last year that the birds stayed in the coop when they felt they needed a little more protection from the elements. I think however a flap or making a wood door that drops open with hinges of some sort to hold a bit of their body heat in would be nice. I was a bit surprised about the amount of coolness that little popdoor allows in. You could try it without the door and just watch them and then be prepared to zip on a door if need be. I watched my birds closely during those cold days and would offer them to go out to the run...and if they were just staying in then I would close the door to conserve their comforts. Then after a while I just determined that mark was about zero for my birds that they would just rather stay in and I just left that coop door closed until it climbed above zero--a lot of days around noon or so. That's when my weather.com app came in handy.
 
What color eggs does the top bird lay?
My guess, and it's just my best guess, from the green legs would be Easter egger. They are pretty hardy in rain and cold as far as I can tell.
The second one appears to be a production red, also a great hardy bird.


Yes the top one looks like an Easter Egger and from all that I've read (I'm still waiting for my EE's to lay) they should lay anywhere from a green, blue-ish green, to a pink-ish tan...
Your red star (sex link) should lay a brown.
 
Hay or Straw to lay on the botton of the coop/run? I've heard it both ways and just want to clarify before I buy any.


I hated it when I tried it (i used hay). It acted like a solid surface, with a solid layer of poop on the top.

Wood shavings are much, much, mch, much better! (And you can get them for free from any sawmill or wood worker)
 
Get a good thermometer/hygrometer so you can monitor conditions inside the coop.
I bought one of these...and it worked great for about 3 weeks. Now it is not registering either of the 2 remote units since it cooled off and I closed the windows.....bummer.

What with the 'graph'?
 
I bought one of these...and it worked great for about 3 weeks. Now it is not registering either of the 2 remote units since it cooled off and I closed the windows.....bummer.

What with the 'graph'?


Really? Mine has been working flawlessly since I installed it last year around thanksgiving.

The graph was me converting minutes to decimals so I could chart sunrise and sunset times in the same spreadsheet where I track my hen's productivity. I have the line set to a average the values so I can simply chart in .05 increments. So like 7:23pm through 7:25pm gets logged as 15.40, whereas 7:26pm through 7:28pm is 15.45 and so on.

I end up with a chart that looks like this:

700


The red lines that curve gently up or down show the sunrise and the sunset, and so I can see abouts how that relates to my girls' laying times.
 
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I was driving to work this am and looked at the temp and thought I may need to put a light out in the bantam coop. Then I thought of ya'll and knew you would laugh. It was 52 here in the south. lol
 
28 here this morning, suppose to get up to 70 though. On a cold winter day in Jan. or Feb, 52 would be a heat stroke! LOL So Fall is definitely here in So. Utah , at least in this high mtn. valley!
 
Really? Mine has been working flawlessly since I installed it last year around thanksgiving.

The graph was me converting minutes to decimals so I could chart sunrise and sunset times in the same spreadsheet where I track my hen's productivity. I have the line set to a average the values so I can simply chart in .05 increments. So like 7:23pm through 7:25pm gets logged as 15.40, whereas 7:26pm through 7:28pm is 15.45 and so on.

I end up with a chart that looks like this:



The red lines that curve gently up or down show the sunrise and the sunset, and so I can see abouts how that relates to my girls' laying times.

Wow! What a cool stats project that would be! When you have tracked this, does the magic number seem to be around 10 hours of daylight? I have heard that production will show a severe dip at the 10 hours mark. We just passed the equinox, so current timing is around 12/12 hours light/dark. That makes November, December, January, and February below this number. Do you find this to be true?
Do you use artificial light during those months?
 
10 hours did seem to be the minimum number of hours for a pullet to begin laying. If she hasn't started laying before the days are shorter than 10 hours in the fall, she won't lay until 8-10 days after the days get to be 10 hours again. Had a silver laced Wyandotte and an Easter egged this applied to this year.
 

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