best food to warm chickens up in the winter?

Soleil_A

Songster
Oct 24, 2017
258
246
152
White lake, Michigan. (Or detroit)
hi guys,

i was just wondering some foods to give my chickens in the winter to warm them up a little. i usually will give them oatmeal warmed up. also my chickens don’t seem to ever want to come out of the inside of the coop, but i don’t really blame its -5 degrees here! i have the run to my coop all covered my shower curtains to block the drafts. thanks!!
 
I warm up their regular feed (water added to make it a mash) We had temps below zero and single digits earlier in the week. I had to go out and replace what froze several times a day. They really appreciated it!!!!
 
that’s a good idea! do you just give them this for their only food? or just as a treat?
I always have dry crumbles available free choice as well. I find that wet feed is more readily eaten than crumbles any time of year and if you let it ferment a bit, you have enhanced nutritional benefits so don't worry if that happens. (but that's a whole new subject, you can find many threads on benefits of fermented feed.)
 
right now in my area we are under a wind chill warning. weather says feels like -24 :barniei feel terrible for leaving them out their!
There are currently several threads going from others in far north areas....all kinds of good advice. I'm basically in the south and we only had a short frigid spell.
 
As long as they are in a coop or the wind side of run is tarped there is no wind chill factor.

My goto treat for cold weather is black oil sunflower seeds. It's incredibly high in fat content- around 30%. Fat as we know is easily used for energy therefore helpful in extreme cold. The act of digestion keeps them warm too. You'll find the birds hunkered in the coop ready for night much earlier in the day in extreme cold. Just tossing corn or scratch out in the run an hour or two before dark gets them out and active and filling crops that they wouldn't do without tossing out the "treats". So admittingly in these arctic blasts my birds eat as much sunflower and corn as they do the balanced feed but it's only for the week (this case two) of those abnormal cold snaps. The idea being to keep them active and crops filled. Added bonus is fat in sunflower seeds. My routine is a 50/50 mix of sunflower and corn a few hours after opening the coop to try and get them to eat more feed then another round of 50/50 mix tossed in the run 1.5 hours before dark.
 

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