cold weathers going fast but...

[redturtle]

my dh and i r new to chicks...i know the cold weather will quickly b gone...and right now they r still babies...but...
in the winter when its cold...does every1 put a red heat lamp in their coops...or what do u do?
also my hubby wants to know when cold is too cold for them...i guess he wants to know how cold of a temperature they can stand...i told him it depends on the breeds but he would like a better explanation...thnx 4 the info

 

[Dragonfly Ranch]

Quote:
We are in California and probably no help for your neck of the woods. But we just make sure the coop has no drafts, the hens have free access during the day and use deep litter method for the floor to help keep the coop warmer. We have the opposite problem - its the heat in the summer.

Good Luck and you will get lots of good information from others in or closer to your woods.

Sandee

 

[tmiller42]

I'm in central Indiana so I suspect our winters may be a little worse than yours. I have a batch of 22 chicks that are now about 4 weeks old and I've had them outside full-time now for a week. Joel Salatin, in his book "Pastured Poultry Profits" provides a great day-by-day temperature chart for the first couple weeks of keeping chicks in the brooder. He pushes his a bit harder than most might recommend, but has several years worth of data to show that they handle it just fine. He also asserts that pushing them a bit harder this way (toward colder temps) will actually "harden" them to better withstand colder temps as they grow. I don't follow his curve religiously or anything, but I've had no trouble at all with my chicks staying fairly close to it. Salatin's chart is as follows:
Day Temp
1 90
2 90
3 90
4 90
5 89
6 88
7 87
8 86
9 84
10 80
11 74
12 68
13 62
14 56
15 50
16 48
17 46
18 42
19 38
20 36
21 34

So you can see, by 3 weeks, they can handle freezing temperatures, but I'd still keep them out of drafts until they're fully feathered out. The curve would continue to drop after that, but begin to shallow a bit I suspect.

My hens have never had a heat source in the coop during the winter, but it's a fairly small coop and I can close up one of the larger vents. They put off enough heat to keep it fairly toasty in there. I sometimes find the windows steamed up in the morning (telling me I shouldn't have closed the vent). We spent many weeks below freezing this winter and a fair number of nights below zero. Chickens are really quite hardy critters.

 

[patandchickens]

see the 'cold coop' link in my .sig below for some discussion of this issue

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Rocky Top Chick]

I always tell myself hot weather is much worse on chickens than cold. I am in NC and did not use a head light except for a couple of nights. In reality it was for my benefit when cleaning the poop boards instead of the girls.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

He keeps 21 day old chicks at 34 degrees? What is his average rate of loss during brooding with that system?

 

[CityChook]

My chickens (I have 4) coop has been as cold as -5F (it was -25F outside). Not prolonged, but they survived. That was with running two heat lamps, too. My coop seems to average 10 to 20F through out the winter season, Nov-March. Seems like the girls seem to do best around freezing -- high 20s. I run heat with a ceramic heat emitter and use a secondary red bulb when temps go below -5.

 

[triggfamily5]

I live in NE Wyoming and we get pretty cold and snowy winters here (and the wind). I have had chickens for 4 years now in a old horse stall, not insulated (and probably not draft free as I find small snow piles in there during the bad storms) and only run a heat lamp (a brooder lamp) with a 250W red bulb just over their water bowl so it stays thawed out. The only days I don't open their pop door is when the snow is flying, it's raining hard, or the wind is blowing really cold. All other days the pop door gets opened. they have done just fine.

Oh, just before winter, I clean their dirt floor and lay down a thick layer straw and pine shavings (especially under their roost) and stir that up through the winter.

 

[redturtle]

thnx 4 the info...will let hubby know...any other suggestions just post 'em

 

[tmiller42]

At the time of the writing, I think he mentioned that 10% loss was considered "acceptable" though they typically did much better than that. I believe his rates have continued to improve, but can't tell you what they typically are now. I can tell you that I've run 2 batches through that curve with zero losses, but so far that's my only experience with it.