Chickens in basement for 8 weeks during coldest winter months?

[Wateredgarden11]

Hi everyone, we are already thinking ahead to the cold months of January and February. We have a brick Victorian farm house and our basement has five seperate rooms. We were wondering if we could make one of the rooms which has a window as a temporary home for our six chickens during the two coldest months of the year. 8 weeks max.
Their outdoor coop is not insulated and we are not so keen on building a coop in our garage which is unattached and a good distance from the house for winter use.
Has anyone ever housed their chickens in their basement for a short period of time? I grow seeds and plants in the room I am considering for our gals so they would be getting artificial light as well as natural light during the day. We also could leave a small nightlight on during the nighttime. Is this an idea that would work for us? Has anyone tried this?

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

hey!

i see that you are in ohio.... i'm not sure that you need to move them into the house... a stinky solution indeed!

another reason you dont want them inside... they have to become accustomed to the weather to deal with it. taking them out of the cold and getting them used to the warmer house...then sticking them back outside... may not be your best bet. and some of the breeds are really winter hardy and can handle it just fine.

we are in central ohio and even in the coldest and i mean COLD times our chickens are outside in a hen house. why not work on insulating their outside coop? especially if its a smaller area they will snuggle together and keep warm. my buddy is near akron and he has all his poultry in a big open barn - it works out just fine.

the best and easiest way we've found is to use straw to insulated both inside and outside the coop or henhouse. it stacks easily so you can make 'walls' around their coop. you can also run an extension cord with a lightbulb for added heat.

mostly birds need to be out of the wind and they can manage just fine.

good luck!

 

[patandchickens]

Ohhhhh, it can be done. You would SO REGRET IT, though. In terms of dust, stink, mice, and unhappy chickens.

I would seriously suggest regarding that as something like Plan X (like after you've gone down thru the list of Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, etc). Like for if you have a seriously ill chicken just not coping with the cold and literally nothing else you can do with her.

Just winterize their outdoor coop as well as possible and you should be good. Sexlinks are pretty winter-hardy. They can take really quite cold temperatures as long as the air is DRY (not humid, i.e. well-ventilated) and NOT DRAFTY and they have sufficient food.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[ducks4you]

Yes, I HAVE

 

[robynt]

Last January we lost 3 chickens in a cold snap here in central Massachusetts (it got down to -10). We moved the remaining 4 chickens into a 10x12 room in our basement. It is a walkout room with a large window and door, and separated from the rest of our basement by another door. All we had in there was wood for our wood stove and our lawn mower, and I must say it actually worked out pretty well. The smell was minimal - we never noticed it in the house, and even in the basement we only noticed the smell when we had the door open to feed the chickens. The chickens seemed content and liked to use the handlebar of the mower to roost on. Occasionally we could hear them when we were in our dining room (the room directly above their basement home). We moved them out in early March, and if we leave the outside door open to this basement room, they are likely to decide to go inside to roost.

 

[Schultz]

We have considered it because of the tiny Seramas and OEGB's we have. Our big girls do just fine in the cold as long as they can get out of the wind and snow. Last year we decided to use an oil filled space heater (radiant heat only/low risk firehazard) and it worked out well for the birds, so no basement coops for us!

 

[Wateredgarden11]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[elizwlsn]

We did this last year and it was fine. A plus was they got so friendly being carried in and out . On rainy wet days we let them stay in all day too. They actually got so they would wait at the gate to the walk out basement yard and walk in for us through a kennel area to their room. We cleaned under their roosts every other day or so but as someone else said you never smelled it in the house upstairs. I imagine you would if you didn't clean it but you do tend to keep it cleaner than you would an outside coop. It made me feel better knowing they were warm at night. We wouldn't put them out till it warmed some because we didn't want them to go from warm to very cold.