Chickens and Winter

[ChickensMomma]

Summer is ending soon and the cold is approaching. I live in Indiana and it can get as cold as Chicago. I have 3 Red Sex Link Hens. Can they handle the cold and sleep outside? Or must they be kept indoors and have outdoor play? Ive never had chickens before and this is my first time. I want to prepare for anything. Will I be able to tell if they are cold and with discomfort?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Summer is ending soon and the cold is approaching. I live in Indiana and it can get as cold as Chicago. I have 3 Red Sex Link Hens. Can they handle the cold and sleep outside? Or must they be kept indoors and have outdoor play? Ive never had chickens before and this is my first time. I want to prepare for anything. Will I be able to tell if they are cold and with discomfort?

They will need a shelter to get in out of the weather when they wish - do you not currently have a coop or is it that they opt to sleep outside of the coop now, during the good weather? Perhaps I am misunderstanding your question about the "sleeping outside". It is very common for people to underestimate the hardiness of their birds.

 

[ChickensMomma]

@Ol Grey Mare
Thank You for responding! I do have a coop I built for them, I let them free range most of the day and leave the gate open for when they are ready to go in and sleep. The coop isnt the biggest because I could only do so much, so thats why they free range through the day, for open space.
What I meant about sleeping outside is if they can handle sleeping in their coop while the temperature has dropped and snow is falling.

 

[Blooie]

@ChickensMomma I live in Northern Wyoming, not too far from Yellowstone Park. We can get some brutally cold winters here. My chickens are outside year 'round in an uninsulated coop with no supplemental heat. We have a very nice hoop run for them and leave the pop door open 24/7. When they get up in the morning, they go out into the run and putz around most of the day regardless of the sub-zero temperatures.

Our hoop run is covered with clear plastic in the winter, ala greenhouse, and if you don't have a run built now is a good time to consider getting one done. In the dead of winter with lots of snow on the ground, many chickens would much prefer to stay inside than walk around in snow, and a solid, predator proof run is one good way to see that they don't have to spend all day "cooped up" without having to free range in bad weather. Keeping them confined inside the coop for months can lead to feather picking and other bad habits - just out of sheer boredom.

Since you just have a few chickens you won't need a huge run - you can whip one together in no time with a couple of cattle panels and some steel fence posts pounded into the ground. We just pounded in the fence posts, arched the cattle panels between them, and covered it with chicken wire to deter overhead predators. Then we ran hardware cloth up the sides of the run about 2 feet, folded it outward at the bottom for about 2 more feet, and anchored the edges down with landscape fabric staples. Covered in clear plastic to keep out the weather, they can still bask in the sunshine and stretch out bit.


Our coop and run. You can see the snow load, which this set-up withstood beautifully. It even laughed at our 60+mph winds, which are not uncommon here in all year long, but especially miserable in winter. Right after I took this photo I grabbed a push broom, went inside the run, and hit the top of the run with it....the snow slid right off, allowing all that beautiful sunshine to stream in.



Here we were just finishing up putting on the plastic. We left an open area above the people door on the North side and a larger one on the south side for ventilation.



We even brooded 3 batches of chicks in the pen you see on the far left of the run and temps were down into the teens and twenties. They thrived, even through a howling snowstorm or two. It's nice and bright in there and with a good layer of deep litter bedding on the floor of the run the adults and chicks did just great.

Your other best friend will be ventilation. Put it up as high as you can without wind being able to ruffle their feathers when they are roosting. I can't stress ventilation enough. It seems counterproductive to give them a warm, dry place for shelter and then leave open places in there, but it's essential to allow built-up ammonia and humidity to get out. The air in the coop will become really humid from their respiration and pooping, and you don't want that humidity to settle around them like curtain....sure recipe for frostbite. Make sure they have a roost wide enough so that they can "sit" on their feet to keep them warm. More chickens are killed by overheating than being cold. They have a down and feather jacket that most of us would pay a fortune to put on during those frigid days and nights and you can bet they know how to utilize it.

Good luck!

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

@Blooie - what was your approach to snow accumulating on the top of the hoop because of the plastic? I have been so tempted to cover my run like that, and the issue of the potential of weight from accumulated snow causing a collapse or damage to the structure of the coop keeps nagging at the back of my mind. In the one photo it looks like there is a decent layer (couple of inches) of snow on the hoop - did you just leave the snow as it fell and only go out to remove it if it got to certain depth?

 

[Blooie]

Since I went out every day anyway, it was easy just to grab the push broom and knock it off - it slid right down the plastic. It did accumulate considerably around the bottom edge of the run as it fell, and as I added the snow off the top to it, but having that much around the bottom of the run insulated at ground level where the chickens were, so it was a good tradeoff. We had a lot of pokey-outy things where we'd wired the chicken wire to the cattle panels, so we draped vinyl lattice over the run before we put down the plastic. It acted as a spacer and kept the plastic from coming into direct contact with the wires. It also added about 1/4 inch of an air gap all the way around, which also helped trap warm air and actually helped melt off light skiffs of snow without us doing a thing. We definitely plan to do the exact same thing again this year. Won't take quite as long, because we just left the lattice up - we liked the way it looked - so all we have to do is put the plastic back on. We had absolutely no issues whatsoever with the snow load on the run. We didn't have a single rip or shred in the plastic, either. I was extremely happy with how it all worked together.

There are some photos of how we put up the plastic on my coop page, OGM, kinda down toward the bottom I think.

Edited because I realized I didn't really answer your question. If the snow was heavy and coming down fast, we'd go out there and knock it off the run from the inside. An inch or two we didn't fuss over, but when we'd get more than that we just tried to stay one step ahead of it. Just tapped the "ceiling" and most of it slid down. Light amounts of snow we didn't worry about - it would usually melt off or blow off on it's own.

 

[shortgrass]

@ChickensMomma I live in Northern Wyoming, not too far from Yellowstone Park. We can get some brutally cold winters here. My chickens are outside year 'round in an uninsulated coop with no supplemental heat. We have a very nice hoop run for them and leave the pop door open 24/7. When they get up in the morning, they go out into the run and putz around most of the day regardless of the sub-zero temperatures. Our hoop run is covered with clear plastic in the winter, ala greenhouse, and if you don't have a run built now is a good time to consider getting one done. In the dead of winter with lots of snow on the ground, many chickens would much prefer to stay inside than walk around in snow, and a solid, predator proof run is one good way to see that they don't have to spend all day "cooped up" without having to free range in bad weather. Keeping them confined inside the coop for months can lead to feather picking and other bad habits - just out of sheer boredom. Since you just have a few chickens you won't need a huge run - you can whip one together in no time with a couple of cattle panels and some steel fence posts pounded into the ground. We just pounded in the fence posts, arched the cattle panels between them, and covered it with chicken wire to deter overhead predators. Then we ran hardware cloth up the sides of the run about 2 feet, folded it outward at the bottom for about 2 more feet, and anchored the edges down with landscape fabric staples. Covered in clear plastic to keep out the weather, they can still bask in the sunshine and stretch out bit. Our coop and run. You can see the snow load, which this set-up withstood beautifully. It even laughed at our 60+mph winds, which are not uncommon here in all year long, but especially miserable in winter. Right after I took this photo I grabbed a push broom, went inside the run, and hit the top of the run with it....the snow slid right off, allowing all that beautiful sunshine to stream in. Here we were just finishing up putting on the plastic. We left an open area above the people door on the North side and a larger one on the south side for ventilation. We even brooded 3 batches of chicks in the pen you see on the far left of the run and temps were down into the teens and twenties. They thrived, even though a howling snowstorm or two. It's nice and bright in there and with a good layer of deep litter bedding on the floor of the run the adults and chicks did just great. Your other best friend will be ventilation. Put it up as high as you can without wind being able to ruffle their feathers when they are roosting. I can't stress ventilation enough. It seems counterproductive to give them a warm, dry place for shelter and then leave open places in there, but it's essential to allow built-up ammonia and humidity to get out. The air in the coop will become really humid from their respiration and pooping, and you don't want that humidity to settle around them like curtain....sure recipe for frostbite. Make sure they have a roost wide enough so that they can "sit" on their feet to keep them warm. More chickens are killed by overheating than being cold. They have a down and feather jacket that most of us would pay a fortune to put on during those frigid days and nights and you can bet they know how to utilize it. Good luck!

I love it!!! I've been trying to explain something in my head to DH, and he isn't understanding what I'm envisioning... Now I have a picture! Love the panels; that's what I was trying to explain to him...I was thinking a hoopy like structure so snow wouldn't weigh down the top... Yay, cool setup Blooie, thanks for sharing! Oh BTW, yes, your chooks will be just fine our in the coop... I'm in Colorado, so same thing as Blooie; we get nasty 20 below winds, sometimes feet of snow with it... It's the wind here, HAVE to have a place for them to get out of it because it can knock a 10 degree day down to a 20 below night with just a 20 mph wind.... I'm jealous of them most times lol, they fluff up their nice feathery coats and don't seem to feel a thing... As long as they stay dry and can sit on their feet on a dry board in the coop, they don't get frostbit that way They're tougher than we give them credit for