Cold weather and 5 week old keets

[Victoria-nola]

I need some advice. Tonight it is to get to 35F overnight low. Only 2 days ago, we brought our keets out to their very large outdoor coop. Up till now we had them climate-controlled indoors in a sizable crate with roosts. There are 7.

We moved them to the super-secure outdoor coop but left their crate with the door propped open. The crate (roost area) is half-covered with towels as they were used to. They are tending to stay in the crate still, they slept on the roosts in there the 2 nights they've been out there. I used the mama heating pad method, so there is a heating pad set at a low temp that is below the roosts.

My question is, they've been used to house temps, and now after we finally got their coop refurbished, it's 20 to 35 degrees F cooler than anything they had experienced before. I'm worried and don't know if I should put more coverings on the crate to help insulate them, or what else I should do to try to give them some additional shelter with this new and shocking reality (although they very much needed the additional space so that has to be good). I have turned up the heating pad a notch, am wondering if I should make efforts to enclose them more to allow the heat to warm up the crate more.

Any thoughts would be very welcome.

p.s. We also have a flock of guineas who live outside who also hatched their own 5-week-old keets. I know they'll be ok because they've been out in the weather all this time. I had wanted to bring in new genetic material and hatched out these keets, and now we're having a rather early cold snap.

 

[R2elk]

I need some advice. Tonight it is to get to 35F overnight low. Only 2 days ago, we brought our keets out to their very large outdoor coop. Up till now we had them climate-controlled indoors in a sizable crate with roosts. There are 7.

We moved them to the super-secure outdoor coop but left their crate with the door propped open. The crate (roost area) is half-covered with towels as they were used to. They are tending to stay in the crate still, they slept on the roosts in there the 2 nights they've been out there. I used the mama heating pad method, so there is a heating pad set at a low temp that is below the roosts.

My question is, they've been used to house temps, and now after we finally got their coop refurbished, it's 20 to 35 degrees F cooler than anything they had experienced before. I'm worried and don't know if I should put more coverings on the crate to help insulate them, or what else I should do to try to give them some additional shelter with this new and shocking reality (although they very much needed the additional space so that has to be good). I have turned up the heating pad a notch, am wondering if I should make efforts to enclose them more to allow the heat to warm up the crate more.

Any thoughts would be very welcome.

p.s. We also have a flock of guineas who live outside who also hatched their own 5-week-old keets. I know they'll be ok because they've been out in the weather all this time. I had wanted to bring in new genetic material and hatched out these keets, and now we're having a rather early cold snap.

At 5 weeks old keets should be nearly fully feathered and acclimated to at least 70°F temperatures. Your expected low temperature should have them seeking warmth. Since they are accustomed to the mama heating pad method, they should know to use it if they feel the need for warmth. I would not increase the temperature that it had been set at.

Other options are to put a heater or a heat lamp in the coop so that its whole temperature does not get too low. Unfortunately this is one of the hazards of dealing with late hatches. In the summer the keets would have been fine and had plenty of time to acclimate.

Good luck.

 

[Victoria-nola]

At 5 weeks old keets should be nearly fully feathered and acclimated to at least 70°F temperatures. Your expected low temperature should have them seeking warmth. Since they are accustomed to the mama heating pad method, they should know to use it if they feel the need for warmth. I would not increase the temperature that it had been set at.

Other options are to put a heater or a heat lamp in the coop so that its whole temperature does not get too low. Unfortunately this is one of the hazards of dealing with late hatches. In the summer the keets would have been fine and had plenty of time to acclimate.

Good luck.

Thank you for getting back to me! Yes, agreed, this is a hazard of the late hatch. Living in the Deep South, I thought it would be better for them to have fall temps than the heavy heat of the summer, but it's a risk.

Without realizing it, my main fear was that they wouldn't use the mama heating pad, but after I sent my post I went back out to check on them and they were all under it! So, phew, you are right, they still know how to use it and they will. They are feathered, but still.

So, I collected up a bunch of old blankets and sleeping bags, and layered them onto the crate, with just the short, door-side left open. Their sounds changed for the better after I started doing it. So now the heating pad will also heat up the surrounding air inside that crate, and they can be all the way under the MHP as well (I re-bent the frame to have a higher roomier space under). I did notch up the heat just to raise it to what it had been indoors. I have a remote temp gauge so I can check the temp without disturbing them.

So what I need to do is check to make sure their electricity remains on, check the temp underneath as the temps fall, and keep their feed and water topped up in the crate. They have a large feeder and a waterer just outside the crate, and I think a few have ventured to them, but there are 2 keets who have not ventured outside the crate at all. Yesterday it was near 80F, and 5 of the keets were up in the rafters then.

Thank you for your help and support. I feel now they will be ok.

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

I need some advice. Tonight it is to get to 35F overnight low. Only 2 days ago, we brought our keets out to their very large outdoor coop. Up till now we had them climate-controlled indoors in a sizable crate with roosts. There are 7.

We moved them to the super-secure outdoor coop but left their crate with the door propped open. The crate (roost area) is half-covered with towels as they were used to. They are tending to stay in the crate still, they slept on the roosts in there the 2 nights they've been out there. I used the mama heating pad method, so there is a heating pad set at a low temp that is below the roosts.

My question is, they've been used to house temps, and now after we finally got their coop refurbished, it's 20 to 35 degrees F cooler than anything they had experienced before. I'm worried and don't know if I should put more coverings on the crate to help insulate them, or what else I should do to try to give them some additional shelter with this new and shocking reality (although they very much needed the additional space so that has to be good). I have turned up the heating pad a notch, am wondering if I should make efforts to enclose them more to allow the heat to warm up the crate more.

Any thoughts would be very welcome.

p.s. We also have a flock of guineas who live outside who also hatched their own 5-week-old keets. I know they'll be ok because they've been out in the weather all this time. I had wanted to bring in new genetic material and hatched out these keets, and now we're having a rather early cold snap.

Hi Victoria, good to heat about your continuing adventures with guineas! From reading through the thread, it sounds like your keets have figured it out now. We have a group of keets from a highly staggered hatch - the youngest is now 2+ mo and I put her outside at under a month old. The rest of the keets are much older, with the oldest 6 weeks older so now about 3 mo. In their new coop (did you see pictures?) I tried to keep the two youngest separated from the rest and in a cage with a heat plate, but they were miserable trying to get to the older keets. So after I opened the cage doors, the youngest keet has been ignoring the heat plate and was exposed to freezing temps at only 5-6 weeks. She cuddled between the bigger keets at night and seems to be doing fine.

 

[Victoria-nola]

Hi Victoria, good to heat about your continuing adventures with guineas! From reading through the thread, it sounds like your keets have figured it out now. We have a group of keets from a highly staggered hatch - the youngest is now 2+ mo and I put her outside at under a month old. The rest of the keets are much older, with the oldest 6 weeks older so now about 3 mo. In their new coop (did you see pictures?) I tried to keep the two youngest separated from the rest and in a cage with a heat plate, but they were miserable trying to get to the older keets. So after I opened the cage doors, the youngest keet has been ignoring the heat plate and was exposed to freezing temps at only 5-6 weeks. She cuddled between the bigger keets at night and seems to be doing fine.

Hi! Great to hear from you. Yes, they figured it out and are doing really well. Of the 7 that hatched in my incubator, one was stuck in the egg and I helped her out. I've read the literature here very carefully, many times, about how to do that and am very careful. Anyway, that one keet has been very slow to grow, was much smaller than the others from the beginning and is still maybe 1/3 the size of the others. At one point (when they were still in the house) it seemed to me that the little one was being kept off the food, so I tried to separate her so she could eat as much as she wanted. Well, she wouldn't have it, and the group of 6 was very upset also. So I put them back together and she is growing, just more slowly. And they treat her like a normal member of the group.

I'm so sorry that I wound up not being present for you when you were building your guinea coop! BYC must have sent me a notification, but I didn't see it. So all that time I never knew you were asking questions etc, and I was on overwhelm here and didn't think to check. I have been there since then and posted some information. I need to post more, and some photos, of what we've done with the refurbish.

If you have any other remaining questions or anything, or just want to talk stuff over, I am getting notifications so can reply if you do.

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

Hi! Great to hear from you. Yes, they figured it out and are doing really well. Of the 7 that hatched in my incubator, one was stuck in the egg and I helped her out. I've read the literature here very carefully, many times, about how to do that and am very careful. Anyway, that one keet has been very slow to grow, was much smaller than the others from the beginning and is still maybe 1/3 the size of the others. At one point (when they were still in the house) it seemed to me that the little one was being kept off the food, so I tried to separate her so she could eat as much as she wanted. Well, she wouldn't have it, and the group of 6 was very upset also. So I put them back together and she is growing, just more slowly. And they treat her like a normal member of the group.

I'm so sorry that I wound up not being present for you when you were building your guinea coop! BYC must have sent me a notification, but I didn't see it. So all that time I never knew you were asking questions etc, and I was on overwhelm here and didn't think to check. I have been there since then and posted some information. I need to post more, and some photos, of what we've done with the refurbish.

If you have any other remaining questions or anything, or just want to talk stuff over, I am getting notifications so can reply if you do.

I didn’t see your post either, but just went back to the coop build thread and responded to your posts!
https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7440310/