Anyone else bringing in the girls?

[lobb40118]

Mine are outside and if you look at my BYC page you will see that i use a tarp for part of the wall covering. It is 5 degrees with -18 windchill. I did put 2 heat lamps and made a cookie tine heater for the water plus I put some yard furniture cushions around the chicken wire portion of the coop. they seem to be doing fine and even started laying. I also put some cayeene in the water and gave them a bit of whole and cracked corn and some Black oil sunflower and scratch to build up body temp.

 

[nerfy]

My DH partitioned an area of our unfinished basement into a winter home for my small flock of 5. We were going to keep them in the coop, but he knew I'd be going crazy with worry about them. It's an area of about 20' x 6'. It is so cool that I can hang with them without freezing my tail feathers off, get my chillin time with my peeps, and know they are safe from varmints and the cold.

 

[ZooMummzy]

If I had any place to bring the girls into, I would, even though we are only in the 20s. They are just too spoiled their own good...and mine too

 

[dancingbear]

Sunday night, our low was 4 degrees F. I have 36 chickens, and 13 guineas, the guineas have taken to staying inside with the chickens at night. I have 3 little chicken doors that open to the runs. I closed 2 of them, and left the 3rd one just open enough for chickens to go out to the smaller run in the daytime. That door is on a hinge so I could leave it where it blocks most of the wind. The other 2 are boards that slide into place. I left a heat lamp on a timer to come on at 4AM. I started to leave it in when I went to close them up for the night, but they all got agitated and were knocking each other off the roosts, etc.

I was worried that I'd find bird-cicles this morning, but they're fine. Today, I went down about 2 hours before dark, and turned on the heat lamp. Then, at dusk, they all went in and settled, no fuss. I think the key was having the light already on, so there was no sudden light added to agitate them.

They were sounding a little odd, sort of wheezy, so I added the heat, and put some strong immune-boosting and respiratory health herbs in the water, too. Tomorrow I'll add cayenne to the feed, too.

The rest of the week's supposed to be a lot warmer, so I'll be able to take out the heat lamp, and put the compact florescent bulb back in, to come on at 4AM.

 

[onebuggirl]

Okay so we decided to only bring in our 3 girls when the temps were 0 AND the windchill in the -20 or lower. I have no way to put up a heat lamp so I use hot water bottles instead. But now it is 16* and snowing and they are outside with petroleum jelly on thier combs and wattles.
Spoiled....yes!

 

[nerfy]

The weather is so crazy here as usual. Was in the negative digits, lots of snow, sleet, nasty stuff. They are predicting high 40's and 50's the next few days. Rain, flood warnings, all that and then another cold front.
Glad my girls have their "winter home"

 

[wildflowers]

We brought ours into the garage almost two weeks ago. It got colder than we were prepared for it to be, their water was freezing and we couldn't get out to get a heater for a few days. It just usually doesn't get that cold around here and we weren't prepared. I am glad we got them in though, we had a foot of snow in our backyard, that also usually doesn't happen here, and even our med sized dog didn't want to go out in that. They would have probably stayed in their coop the entire time and what they have in the garage is a little more spacious. We will be moving them out again soon. Hopefully this is the last of the crazy weather. We are taking care of our unpreparedness though.