Acclimating 3 month old chickens to outdoor temps in November

[CoffeeintheCoop]

I left the porch door window open all the way yesterday, even though it was in the 30's when I left for work. There was no visible condensation when I got home. I left them out there last night again with the window open about 3-4 inches, and no visible condensation this morning.

At 5:30, only 1 of 4 was roosting properly for winter, with her feet covered. It is the baby with a deformed foot. After reading the article by Alaskan about cold weather poultry care, I'm more worried about Jillaroo. Her toes might be broken, and I think her risk of frostbite is significant due to probable limited circulation. She was laying down on her feet.

 

[NatJ]

My porch has a door with a screen window 2x2 feet, or even bigger. I wonder if that ventilation is the best option, if I carefully block direct drafts.

Screen actually blocks a LOT of air movement, so you may not have to do anything about drafts.

You can check by looking at the chickens when they are on their roost to sleep: are their feathers moving around in the wind? If not, they are fine. (Check again if there is a really heavy wind, just to make sure.)

They don't need their whole coop to be free of drafts or wind, just part of it for sleeping in (and they can go sit there during the day, if they need to warm up.)

Maybe the porch with open window is best at night, and pen plus open door tiny house coop is adequate for the day.

That might work, unless you get tired of moving them back and forth every morning and evening.

 

[3KillerBs]

At 5:30, only 1 of 4 was roosting properly for winter, with her feet covered.

It's not as cold to a chicken as it is to us. If I were wearing a down parka with temperatures in the 30's I probably wouldn't need gloves.

 

[saysfaa]

This is starting to make more sense to me. I am now understanding that the reason the porch is so cold is that there is condensation on the inside of the windows...

I moved 10 other chickens to a super well-built and recently improved garden shed and I put about a foot of shavings and straw on the concrete floor and that coop, although taller than the ceilings of the house, (it has a second floor level to half of it..

Can you fence off the second floor level for the littles?
Or, much better, make a safety pen in the lower part if it can't be divided. Basically a divider with openings big enough for the littles to go through but not the bigs. With food and water in that, the littles can be safe if the bigs pester them. If the littles can get out of reach, especially if they can also get 5-6' away from the bigs or out of sight of the bigs, they really should be safe there.

I think they will do much better with that than either in the small coop or on the porch. And be much, much, much more enjoyable for you to take care of them.

 

[629864]

While I'm very new to keeping chickens, they've taught me a lot over the past 6 months. We have two henhouses connected by a shared pen, one for the laying hens (Rhode Island Reds) and one for the smaller birds (some Easter Eggers and Some Brown Leghorns) while they grew (which has it's own closed run). We're in the process of integrating everyone. What I've noticed over the past several weeks since I moved the chicks from the brooder in our garage to the chickhouse outside is that the moment there's even a sliver of light in the morning, they are out in the run free ranging...no matter how cold or wet. When they feel the need to get warmed up, they go inside the house for a little rest. The two houses each have a heat lamp that just adds a bit of warmth ... the thermostat shows the temps in there only get slightly warmer than the outside air, but it does stay dry in the houses, which is I think the most important thing. The houses are old (previous farm owners built them with suboptimal materials probably 30 years ago), so quite "naturally" have plenty of ventilation. Where we felt there was too much airflow, we put up plastic winterizing sheeting. There's never any condensation inside the houses, even on dreary wet days. I know not all breeds enjoy being free range, but in my flock, these birds are super resilient and love being outdoors any chance they get. When I run inside to keep from getting soaked, the birds are still out looking for bug snacks. My 3 surviving guineas included....sleeping on top of the chick run instead of going under shelter.....even in the pouring rain. So for what it's worth from a newbie, I'd say to give them a nice dry place to roost away from wet and wind, and trust in their feathers to keep them warm.

 

[NatJ]

a divider with openings big enough for the littles to go through but not the bigs. With food and water in that, the littles can be safe if the bigs pester them. If the littles can get out of reach, especially if they can also get 5-6' away from the bigs or out of sight of the bigs, they really should be safe there.

I don't think that will work, because the "littles" are not much smaller than the "bigs."

Quote from OP:

I only have one age-group, everyone is approaching their 3-month birthday. What differs is their personalities. When I tried to integrate two brooder sets at 4 or 5 weeks (due to having 2 smaller brooder spaces rather than 1 very large brooder, plus radically different developmental levels), this group of 4 "Littles" made it clear that they wanted to go back to the brooder, so I thought I could allow for two flocks. Also, a full sized Brahma focused on a tiny EE who also is white for some reason. And one of the Littles is handicapped with a damaged foot.

Also, this makes it much harder to supervise any integration:

the larger group of 10 is living on another property, 2 or 3 miles away.

It looks to me like keeping them as two separate groups all winter may be the best choice in this situation.

 

[lifein1840]

A coop isn't supposed to be warm. It is supposed to have the same temperature and humidity as the outside air.

What it's supposed to be is DRY and free of drafts.

We keep our chickens dry and they keep themselves warm with their built-in down parkas.

This illustration is from an article on cattle barns, but the principle holds for chickens too.

View attachment 2885106

These are my 5-week-old chicks, in the process of integrating into the flock. It's been in the low 40's overnight most of this past week and they're right there in the open-air coop along with the rest of the flock, doing fine because they're well-feathered and cuddling up.

View attachment 2885115

Some are huddling on the ground, others are sleeping on top of their pen. Tomorrow or Thursday I'll take the playpen out and give them a juvenile roost -- though they may still sleep on the ground in a good, thick layer of bedding.

wonderful post!!

 

[3KillerBs]

wonderful post!!

Thank you.