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

[Hokum Coco]

Greetings fellow bird lovers!

I live in inland Maine and woke up to a slight frost this morning.

What advice would you offer to someone starting out?

I am subject to -40º weather l live in Canada think North Pole. I have 65 trips around the sun and have been keeping chickens and birds for decades.

Your best practice I find is to not be too concerned about winterizing or heating your coop to help your birds combat the cold.

Predator proofing "ABSOLUTELY".

Your efforts should be spent in winterizing your birds and letting them acclimatize to their surroundings.
This is done by feeding them whole corn if available or cracked corn as an added supplement in a separate feeder.

The extra protein is more the adequate to bring them through the
"COLDEST" winter.

Do keep an eye open for birds that maybe not be adapting well to the new menu and may be at the lower end of the pecking order they can sometimes run into problems and may need extra TLC.

That being said in a perfect world the flock will flourish and do just fine .

I do not add any extra heat or lighting.
Egg production does slack off but I have more than enough eggs for the table all winter long (24 hens).

Some people may disagree with my method but it has worked well for me and I am not about to change.

I look at it in the same light as winterizing your car.

You really do

"NOT"


have to winterize your car if you can keep it in a controlled environment at all times otherwise you are in for

"MAJOR" problems.

 

[Coffee 1st]

Alaskan, I read somewhere that snow on Halloween is good luck!

It's always a toss up here, we've had blizzards, but this time we still have a lot of leaves left on the trees because the weather has been weird.


Today is November 1st, cold rain, past few weeks temps have fluctuated, between the 50s and down to the 20s at night.
This could have been snow today so I won't complain!
Most of the flock is in molt, including one very hard molt who looks like a fully plucked chicken. She shivers a lot, takes time standing on one foot with the other tucked in close.
The gentleman at the feed store suggested calf manna. Haven't tried it yet, but am toying with the idea.
One silkie is broody, need to move her to a wire cage because it is not a good time to have chicks.

I am liking my automatic door opener & closer. It uses a light sensor. So far no one has been left out at night and it opens in the am when we have sometimes already left for work.

How are everyone's winter preps going?

I do agree strange weather for Nov 1st.. I live in MN and we have already had snow and now it seems like spring.. went out to rake today and noticed my roses are starting to bloom again...

 

[Alaskan]

I did finally set up lighting for my chickens.... I only have a few pullets this year with the rest of my flock hens, so production dropped to ZERO, which is not acceptable.

Now that the lights have been on for a few days I have gone from 0,1, or 2 eggs to 5 today, WHOOT!


It is now cold enough that the hose is no longer functional, even at midday ... ... The water is still OK... Staying mostly thawed, so no heaters have been needed yet.

I have one house duck that goes outside every afternoon.. Trying desperately to get her acclimated to the cold and out of the house before I am stuck with her until April. The big problem is that she is a singleton, so way difficult to integrate with the flock, and she is also pretty young, much younger than all of the rest.

I also still haven't gotten around to all of the butchering that needs to happen!

As to molting in the cold... I find a high protein feed, like 18% or even 20%, is good to get the feathers in faster.

 

[jburts]

time again to get coup winterized, same thing I said above on this post, no snow yet this pic is from last year.
all seven chickens are doing great, added a latch for the door behind the coup where I let them out into the back yard more raccoon proof.
I have the heated water in there and ready to go, also the heat lamp just for the early morning hrs mostly for egg production,
it is on a timer,
a big food holder since I have seven now they go through the food now that it is getting colder.
had to put a new plastic on top just put it over the old one that should give some extra protection for the run.
still trying to figure out how to keep little birds out I put some chicken wire around the run over the sides but those little tiny birds just squeeze through both.
in the summer I don't have a problem with them, but winter they like to eat the chicken food.
the plexi glass on the windows slide down and keep the wind out, but air flow still gets in.

 

[Alaskan]

Sounds good... Except for the heat lamp if you feel like you must heat.. Maybe switch to a safer kind of heat?

I have heard that the infrared panels have a pretty low combustion risk.

(There was a coop fire up here just today I think it got their house too ).

 

[aart]

time again to get coup winterized, same thing I said above on this post, no snow yet this pic is from last year.
all seven chickens are doing great, added a latch for the door behind the coup where I let them out into the back yard more raccoon proof.
I have the heated water in there and ready to go, also the heat lamp just for the early morning hrs mostly for egg production,
it is on a timer,
a big food holder since I have seven now they go through the food now that it is getting colder.
had to put a new plastic on top just put it over the old one that should give some extra protection for the run.
still trying to figure out how to keep little birds out I put some chicken wire around the run over the sides but those little tiny birds just squeeze through both.
in the summer I don't have a problem with them, but winter they like to eat the chicken food.
the plexi glass on the windows slide down and keep the wind out, but air flow still gets in.

Light for winter laying should not be a heat lamp, but just a white incandescent or CFL.

Heat lamps are dangerous, especially in that small a coop adjacent to another structure, and the red colored light does nothing to stimulate the brain to produce eggs.

 

[Alaskan]

I have heard that all you need for egg production is enough light to barely read a newspaper... So strong Christmas lights work.

I use the new Christmas lights.. The lights produce NO heat at all (old types do get hot, which is NOT safe).

Anyway, I like the Christmas lights, they are cheerful, and have very low fire risk (just if the cord frays, and where it connects to the outlet), and you can take a string and line the entire coop, and a second string to light the run.

 

[Alaskan]

Also... It doesn't cost much money to run two strings of Christmas lights.

 

[Pelican525]

Here in North Texas all I have to do is add a little extra straw in the coop, close the shutters on the windows and make sure their water doesn't freeze.

 

[jburts]

well it depends on where you live and how much snow you get and how cold
Here in Eastern Washington, we get snow but lately we have had some mild winters,
we will see this year what it does, had frost this morning a little.
usually it can get down in the teens and single digits, but plenty of sun during the day which helps heat things up
we can have 30's during the day or colder in Dec and Jan Feb,
I brush snow off the top of the coop with a broom
I have a timer set to a heat lamp which is bolted into the coup timer is set to come on at 5:30 right now, mostly to give chickens some more daylight for eggs.
it does not get hot in the coup lamp keeps it above freezing when it is really cold out, if it is down in the teens or single digits it will raise it enough where the chickens are not as uncomfortable.
they fluff up a lot to stay warm, they stay in their coup more when it is this cold out.
the heat lamp only stays on until 7 when the sun comes up.
so during the day it is not on, and most of the night it is not on either.
I have seven chickens this winter so I'll see how they do.
I also as I mentioned before have a heated avian water container cause I can't be home to keep it unfrozen.
I do clean it out and put fresh water in it, right now I have a water for outside too, that is changed every morning
but soon I won't be able to do that it will be frozen.
I use pine shavings, and make it thicker.
so not too much everything now is all ready for winter.
my coup is also next to the house and a sheltered spot out of the wind.
and direct sun in the summer with a huge snow ball tree that is around it.
and you want to make sure no preditors can get in and in the winter we have a small hawk that comes around so not sure if they would attack them when they are outside or not.
they have been going after the smaller birds and doves.
so that is why on the top of the run is sealed and protected from hawks etc.