Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[TruGritCkn]

I just read this whole thing from start to finish.
One of the blood vessels in my eye has blown from looking at the monitor.

Really I think my eye ball blew a blood vessel when I read about the chicken pecking out your eyeball!
Jeez guyz... LOL and learn too, I was home feeling ill so I sat all day and read. I finally started taking notes. I have had chickens for less than a year. I have kept all sorts of other types of animals and am not that young anymore, just getting better.

All I want to know is at what temperature would one begin to fret say if the inside of the coop was draft free and just cold with good ventilation and everything else being near "normal/good chicken husbandry" fresh water food basic health etc...

Thanks you Old Timers for sharing the skills. No Doubt. I like that saying that, "if you fall down or pass out in the coop they, the chickens, will eat you." Hahahaha

Really Thank you all for making an eggsilent read. It took me forever to figure out what ACV and BOSS was. Too funny. It sucks being the greenhorn sometimes esp. when people take advantage and try to steal you blind.

Good OLD TIMERS PLEASE TELL ME.... How cold is too cold for chickens? I live in eastern Montana and it can get sortta cold up here. A lady down the way has about 50 chickens in an old wooden outbuilding which is old and a bit drafty and her chickens lived through last winter. It was freezzzzzzing last winter with months where the temp did not go above freezing and some weeks on end where it never went over ZERO! Two nights the wind chill was -51. Brrrrrrrrrrrr... The still air in the coop would be Brrrrrrrr cold same as outisde temp could be maybe -30 for a few weeks maybe.

Am I the only dufus that is trying to keep chickens over winter up near the Canadian border. Should I get a few heat lamps for the colder than 20 below zero weather or what?

All I want to know is at what temperature would one begin to fret. Tell me the cold hard truth, Please.

It is 19 degrees in the coop right now and it is supossed to get to 7 tonight. The chickens are doing prety good so far but I am worried.

 

[Beekissed]

The truth is there are no temperatures in the states over which one should begin to fret. Birds acclimatize to the weather when allowed to do so and are perfectly designed to withstand extremely cold temps...and extreme heat. Keep your bedding dry in the winter and let nature do the rest.

ETA: It really helps if you have breeds that are naturally hardy in all weathers.

 

[bobbi-j]

TruGrit - throw the thermometer away! It's only going to cause you stress. Your chickens will be fine. Make sure they have plenty of food and water, and extra litter on the floor if it makes you feel better. They're covered in down - a wonderful insulator. Do you have any wild birds in Montana during the winter? How do you suppose they survive? They don't even have the benefit of a nice, draft-free coop. Heat lamps can cause more harm than good. Use those, get your chickens used to the heat (which means they would NOT be acclimated to the cold), and then what happens if your electricity goes out? There they are in the cold and not used to it. This thread also has great information: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=421122

 

[TruGritCkn]

Thanks Bobbi-J and BeeKissed you two are sweet to not give me The Hand!

I love this place, BYC! I will sleep better at night from your wise words and also kindness.

I rarely post and when I do I always feel dumb because I know it has been discussed in depth somewhere on BYC. I just saw another post on cold temps.

Ahhhhhh I can chill out finally. hahaha

I laughed so hard today... Off with the head! Prison Cut! Obey the bucket! Thank you fellow chicken farmers.

 

[featherz]

Quote:
We have members in Alaska that don't need heat. I'm only a few hours from Canada and it got to -26 here (real temp, not including wind chill) last winter.. and I have skinny white leghorns, even better.. Oh, and little bantam pullets. All were A-OK and hardly even noticed the cold!

 

[Tracydr]

Quote:
Yah, I don't have time to break water bowls each day. Filling up the heated dog bowls in winter is much quicker. In summer, I use nipple waterers made out of home depot buckets.

As for the pop doors - I don't have time to train a good dog/LGD and I often get home/leave home in the dark so it's nice to know the door will be closed and the chickens will be shut in. If I were home to do it, I'd go without. One of my coops is quite a distance from my house (we made it out of an old horse run-in) so it saves me a walk unless I need to get eggs. We made them ourselves with the add on motor, so not a huge expense.

Yeah, when I lived in cold climates, those heated dog bowls and heated horse buckets were the greatest things ever!

 

[Tracydr]

Quote:
That reminds me... I'm curious what any of the OT think of the "FEED AS SOLE RATION" mentality. They give you bag of... stuff containing no animal protein and no green stuff, and tell you not to feed your chickens anything else.

Then they hand you a bag of scratch and tell you to feed it in addition to the first bag of stuff. Am I missing something here?



footnote: I am an OT in regard to human nutrition, and get a little cynical when people start wanting to calculate ratios and percentages too strictly. That might need to be another thread, though.

I believe a varied diet is important. My chickens get as much from the kitchen and garden, as well as alfafalfa as they do in feed. Doesn't seem to hurt laying much. I'm sure my meat chickens gain a little slower but I spend less feeding them so who cares if I butcher them a week or two later and they develop more flavor? I like processing one or two at a time when I need them and growing them slower allows me the ability to do that.

 

[sonew123]

Quote:
We have members in Alaska that don't need heat. I'm only a few hours from Canada and it got to -26 here (real temp, not including wind chill) last winter.. and I have skinny white leghorns, even better.. Oh, and little bantam pullets. All were A-OK and hardly even noticed the cold!

Im only 3 hours from you and we hit -40 this past Winter 2 days straight-none of my birds perished from those temps but boy they were cold!
Dh caved for me and put in heaters that week for them! brought the temps to -10 in coops...

 

[Ridgerunner]

The coldest I've seen it with chickens was where it stayed below 0 Fahrenheit for just over a week. We had a few that slept out in trees and they came through OK. They were in a protected valley and those were thick trees, so maybe the wind on them wasn't as bad as you might think. Where you live, I'm sure you understand wind chill is real. I'm not convinced that a real light movement of air is a problem, but I think a breeze hitting them can be.

I have not experienced -51* F with chickens so I can't talk about that. -10* F or maybe a tad colder for my minimum with chickens. When I was working in Kazakhstan it did get in that lower temperature range. There were wild birds around. I especially remember the ravens, but there were others. I don't know where they roosted, I wasn't out roaming at night, but they certainly were there and survived without heat lamps.

The one thing I'll say though is to make sure they have decent ventilation. Moisture build-up in the coop from their breathe is an enemy. If you have a real tight enclosed coop where moisture cannot excape, then you could have a problem with frostbite. Wild birds do not sleep in tight places where moisture cannot escape.

I don't worry about wide flat roosts. I use tree limbs I collected after an ice storm as roosts. One end of those is fairly small. When a chicken hunkers down on that end of the roost, I can't see any of its toes. Others in real cold weather may have different experience with that, but I really don't worry about having a 2x4 flat side up. I worry about keeping a direct breeze off them and giving them plenty of ventilation. Then I quit worrying.

 

[Tracydr]

Quote:
I wouldn't fret. I lived in a similar climate for about four years. Had a crappy little shed, never closed the pop door. The peafowl slept in the big, open barn. Everybody was fine, never sick or frozen. No heat lamps, it never even occurred to me, this was before AOL even.