Anyone's hen actually ever freeze to death?

[madavis25]

I am in my first year with chickens. They are 8mos old. They started laying at the end of November. We live in Southern Oregon, where we typically have cold winters. I bought them as 3d old chicks from our local Grange Co-op. They said they carried these breeds because they are hardy to our local winters. The coop I built is the "playhouse coop" that I saw on this site, but I left the roosting area open on 1 side after reading about the importance of fresh air. The birds are protected from wind and rain while roosting. I was a little nervous as the winter approached, because there were few posts by people whose chickens survived winter in an open air coop. We had the coldest stretch of weather that this area has seen in 12 years. The lowest it reached was 10 deg F. I had to defrost their water in the mornings and made sure they had sufficient food. Not only did they survive, but the 3 that were laying continued laying and as the weather warmed up, but before it was steadily above freezing, the 4th started laying. I have 1 Auricana, Barred Plymouth Rock, Black Australorp, and a Rhode Island Red.

I hope this helps others who are considering an open air coop.

 

[Praxxus]

I've had one hen die of the cold. She refused to roost in the rafters with the other hens. She would walk around a lot and not squat onto her legs to keep them warm. The temps got down to -20. Her legs froze solid. I went out one morning and heard a clacking sound. It was her walking or trying to walk on frozen feet. I tried to slowly warm them and save her but her legs turned black and she died pretty quick. But for the most part the chickens don't die from the cold. Of course I have heavy breed birds. They're better off in the cold than leghorns and bantams I think.

 

[CARS]

To answer the question posed without reading the entire thread (disclaimer) NO! They are very hardy if yo raise birds designed for your region.

 

[Badlatitude]

I agree with breed selection. Heck having any animal in cold weather needs to be properly suited to it. Common sense goes a long way with raising and careing for all forms of critter. If you have lightly feathered small frame birds designed for some place warm they clearly will not do as well as a heavily feather large frame bird. Just like going outside in a T shirt wount cut it when you need a coat lol

Ducks , geese , turkeys , phesants , quail and all forms of fowl live outside in the cold all of their lives! While im no chicken farmer by any means..... We never had one freeze to death. Even found one with its feet FROZEN in a pan! (the pan had water in it for the barn cat and was outside on the ground!!!!God only knows why it decided to stand in it to begin with. My father picked it and the pan up and set em on one of thoose oil filled radiant heaters to thaw. Chicken lived just fine. Infact her and her sister were our last 2 surviving birds after a series of coyote attacks that took a total of 11 birds. One being my hen turkey.

While im not in Alaska or northern NY here in CT is gets pretty darn cold. Definatly drops into the teens and lower. If a chicken with its feet frozen in a pie plate can survive then id say its gotta be pretty hard to freeze them. I dont believe just because you find a frozen dead bird that it actually froze. The cold can wear on anything and if they arent healthy to begin with im sure the cold will speed up their demise but the underlaying problem is still the cause.

 

[NYTreeFarmer]

Today is January 6, 2014. I have five hens (Agway chicks 2013, two bard black, one red, two white) and two multi-colored roosters (wild-looking) (given to me). I give them grain and table scraps but otherwise they live a feral life at the edge of the forest in Grafton, NY, at elevation 1300 feet above sea level. Their job is to roam about and eat ticks, mice, and to hide their eggs from me (So far I found two hidden nests full of frozen eggs). They all roost at night in a 50 foot tall hemlock tree outside my house. I did not have time to build them a proper chicken coop. Our guinea hens of several years/broods used to roost in a white pine tree, so I figured I would see if "feral" chickens can also do this. Sometimes I brought them inside the garage for the night if I could catch them. We had a big snow storm last week that brought temperatures as low as -10 degrees F at night. All seven chickens have survived outdoors "in the wild". One hen (small white) and one rooster spend the storm out of the tree. During and after the storm the five chickens (four hens, one rooster) spent three days and three nights in the tree without coming down to feed. One rooster stayed in a lean-to on the ground where their feed is kept dry. A day after the storm ended, he rejoined the other chickens up in the tree, and only two hens came down to feed. During the storm, I baked some feed and flour into a loaf and tied it to a tall pole/stick and pushed it up into the tree to feed the chickens in their roost. (for more than two days they ignored it). (The missing white hen had gone missing for multiple days in the past) After five days, I heard the missing white hen cluck, and I saw her sheltering under a different hemlock tree, where she was hiding/sheltering under a table. I put some feed under the table for her and she started eating immediately. I have read that wild turkeys will spend a week or more in their roosts during/after bad snow storms (until the snow firms up enough that they can walk on it). I was really amazed that the chickens (descended from "jungle birds") survived a night at negative ten degrees F, and two previous days/nights at about -5 degrees F, but the snow laden branches of the hemlock tree provided some additional shelter/insulation for them.
For reasons unknown, the predators (coyotes, fox, Fischer cats, bob cats, raccoons, skunks, weasels) that are active in the woods a hundred feet behind my house have not bothered/eaten the chickens, and a feral domestic cat who prowls the yard also ignores them. I periodically spray cat-style tick repellent (permethrin) on their skin up under their feathers to keep them flea and tick-free. The two roosters are aggressive protectors, and will attack any NEW person or thing that comes around. But, the hens were alone for months during the summer and nothing ate them then either. I nailed a sheet of aluminum flashing around the base of the hemlock tree to prevent raccoons or Fischer from climbing up the tree to eat the roosting birds at night, but I have never seen any predator tracks around the tree (other than the feral cat, who does not climb the tree). These chickens also have a very bad habit of pecking and eating foam insulation (e.g., Styrofoam coolers, blue house insulation, pink house insulation), which they seem to enjoy greatly.
If the hens and roosters survive till spring, I will let them breed feral and maybe add some bronze turkey poults to the family (hopefully the turkeys will fatten up by eating the acorns we get in the fall). I will try to put a shelter up in the tree they roost, but otherwise keep them as feral as they can be, and if the population grows to the point where it will be expensive to feed them next winter, then we will be eating some free-range/feral chicken next fall/winter.
n y tree farmer AT ny cap DOT rr DOT com

 

[Mrs. K]

Older hens, and very young chicks are the most susceptible to dying from the extreme cold..... just like any other animal, us included. It is considerably harder to kill healthy mature well fed birds, or any healthy animal.

Any animal can die from exposure to the cold, if there is the least bit else wrong with them, it decreases their ability to cope with the added stress of the cold.

I don't have heat, and I did have a 4+ year old hen die...... on one of the first cold snaps....... I think is was a cold + age thing.

Mrs K

 

[Going Quackers]

Older hens, and very young chicks are the most susceptible to dying from the extreme cold..... just like any other animal, us included. It is considerably harder to kill healthy mature well fed birds, or any healthy animal.

Any animal can die from exposure to the cold, if there is the least bit else wrong with them, it decreases their ability to cope with the added stress of the cold.

I don't have heat, and I did have a 4+ year old hen die...... on one of the first cold snaps....... I think is was a cold + age thing.

Mrs K

Agreed. The only exception would be birds totally not recommended for your climate, i know some are not equipped for extreme cold(extreme heat), i think this is where common sense has to come into play, each situation has to be evaluated.

 

[LuvinBlueBirds]

I live in a fairly cold area. Zone 4 and we can have to -30 at times.

what I have noticed with the.different breeds is that the ones with the smaller combs and wattles do much better. My Wyandottes are out scratching and doing their chicken thing even at below zero. The others....not so much. Especially ones with large.combs. Have some frostbite on a rooster.

 

[herrade]

My chickens are raised and kept as my entertainment, as my pets, and my egg source... They lay eggs year round and are spoiled birds. That pleases me.

This really gets to the heart of the matter: It pleases me to spoil my hens. So whether they could survive without a bit of heat, or live crickets or flats of wheat grass (my indulgence for them this winter), I feel better when I care for them. YMMV.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the lowest temperatures we saw were -5 last Saturday. I have a 100-watt ceramic lamp in the coop, which keeps it 10-to-20 degrees warmer than the outside air temperature, depending on wind. I've seen a bit of of frost bite at the tips of their combs, and I've heard a *lot* of complaining from them about the cold. They tend to stay in the coop for the extra few degrees of heat, even when its warmer out (ie, in the 20s). This morning, at minus 4, they decided to come out of the coop *and* the run while I was changing their water and cleaning up. One of my ladies gave up halfway between the run and the porch of our house (where they like to hang out when there's snow on the ground), and just dropped down in the snow and puffed up her feathers. I assume this crouching behavior is to protect her legs from the cold, but she also seemed stupefied and in slow motion. She wouldn't budge. So I picked her up and held her close. She made the funniest little whimpering sounds. I took her to the garage, where the ladies sometimes like to hang out in snowy weather, but she was miserable there too, so I snuggled her up again and delivered her back to her heated coop. The other ladies, who had hunkered down on the porch, also came back to the coop. They stuck their heads out of the door to greet me when I brought them treats, but they won't come out. Smart chickens!

 

[mebuff daisy]

Some days it got to 24- we had 2 heat lamps going but it was still freezing in the coop