Do chickens need dark to lay eggs.

[vehve]

The ceramic bulbs I've seen come in 60, 75, 100, 150 and 250W, so they should be sufficient. Plus it's all going out as heat since no light is produced. Also, the risk of breakage is smaller, I haven't tried smashing one but they seem a lot sturdier than glass bulbs. But @aart you're right, this was starting to drift off a bit.

I don't have much experience with winter and chickens together, as this will be my first winter with them, but so far we had -5C (23F) last night, the coop went down to about 0C, and I haven't seen any need to heat it yet. Once we get to -15C or below I might start considering it. I do have a separate heater to keep the water from freezing out in the run though, but it's submerged and doesn't really heat the environment all that much.

If I need too heat the coop, I have a 90W tube heater and a 75W ceramic lamp in there, with the option to half the power to the heat lamp. And my coop is pretty heavily insulated.

 

[aart]

The whole premise of 'heating the coop' and/or 'holding heat' with a low ceiling or insulation is faulty in that you can't heat a space that is open to the kind of ventilation chickens need to stay healthy.

Warmer air actually holds more moisture than colder air, moisture/humidity is what causes frostbite when combined with freezing temps so you want that humidity out of the coop thus the need for lots of ventilation up high to carry moisture, and ammonia, out of the coop. Granted you can't have lower humidity inside a ventilated coop than the humidity outside the coop, that can be a problem in many climates.

Heating elements, and the extension cords often used, inside a coop can be a fire hazard with the dry bedding and the dust that is part of keeping chickens. But also allowing the birds to acclimate to warmer temps inside can be disastrous if the power fails and the heat that they are used to is now gone. Trying to use heat to 'keep the chickens warm' can just cause way more serious problems than the 'non-problem' it tries to solve.

We had a frigid winter with ~150 inches of snow last season, my first with chickens, and I worried but they did just fine with no heating used except to keep water liquid. Temps hovered at around 0F for days at a time, lowest temp was -12F which we hit a few nights. The only problem I saw was a tad of frostbite, mostly mild grayish spots on combs, and 2 big black patches on rooster wattles that happened at 29F and 65% humidity. Those black patches were watched closely for infection but healed up just fine with no treatment and you'd never know they had been there.

They had plenty of kiln dried pine shavings that they would nestle down in to rest during the coldest days when they didn't hardly leave the coop. Wide roosts they could have flat feet covered with breast/belly feathers kept their feet in fine shape.

Sorry to be so adamantly long winded, I just think it's a very important issue that has so many misconceptions.


ETA:adding this here too as it didn't post in my other post earlier in this thread how cold is too cold for a chicken

<weird font thing going on>

 

[vehve]

@aart I am on the same track with you, but I built the coop so that if we get a sudden drop in temperature, to below, say, -20C (-4F), I have the option of adding some heat to the coop if it looks like the chickens aren't coping with the temperature. Mostly we stay around -10C (14F) during the winter.

 

[aart]

During the coldest days I just made sure they seemed able to be active by throwing down some sunflower seeds on the coop floor, they would jump up from their shavings cuddle and scratch enthusiastically and gobble them up, then nestle back down for a nap.

The hardest thing for me, being half lame at the time, was keeping the path shoveled clear to the coop so I wouldn't fall and gathering eggs before the froze solid.

The easiest part was, I work from home and was able to keep an eye on things frequently so could observe closely how the cold effected their behaviors.

 

[Wxguru]

Not good to have snow coming into the coop. I would do as suggested and see if maybe you could put up some plywood where possible and block drafts and fix some of the bigger gaps if at all possible.
Dimming the light will reduce heat. When you dim the element, that element isn't getting as much power, and therefore isn't producing as much heat either. As others have said, they do will need rest.
I just painted my new nesting boxes with flat black spray paint....so the inside of them is black. I am not going to hang curtains or any of that other stuff to help...I think just giving them a dark area should work.

 

[Crow hop]

I appreciate the concern but I assure you that I do not do "dodgy" electrical work. And it seems that what I am calling as resistor is the same as your "tube heater".
Where we live the electrical supply can be unreliable so I am really only wanting to produce enough heat to clear the air.
I have grown birds most of my life but this is my first attempt in a northern climate. I do know that for every 20 deg. F. Increase in air temp the water holding capacity of air doubles. So if it is -40 and 20%RH you can get into some real trouble by shutting air off and heating the coop.
I grew up in OK/AR and I have seen entire houses of 20,000 birds blinded by ammonia because people shut down ventilation at 30 deg. F. or because emergency ventilation didn't work. Likewise, in high-school, I raised fighting cocks and had 75 on tie-cords out in the open. I've seen them on their perch in temps well below freezing waiting on water and feed in the mornings.
Chickens are amazingly tough but moisture and bad air is a killer. I want to keep my coop warm enough to draw enough air through so as to keep it dry. Thereby, if there is a power outage for a few days they will at least have good air and be fairly used to the cold.
Now as for the dark and egg laying???
I know that for birds to maintain egg production they need to maintain around 14 hrs of light. Here we range around 5 at the Winter Solstice. It is my desire to manage my light but not use it for heat, primarily. I have not seen the ceramic "no light" bulbs. I will definitely check into them!

 

[vehve]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean that your wiring would be dodgy, it was more of a general statement regarding the plastic fixtures in combination with high heat bulbs. But yeah, you probably want about 8-10 hours of darkness for your birdies for them to stay sane. And to just keep a slight airflow, a low wattage heat bulb would probably work fine. Since ammonia is lighter than air, it might be a good idea to install the heat source pretty high up so that you don't add to the problem by thawing out poop lower down, but that part is just my own theorizing. Whereabouts on this planet are you located, with that kind of daylight I'm guessing about 62 deg N, somewhere in Alaska?

 

[Crow hop]

Yes we are about 70 miles NE of Anchorage. Our winters aren't too bad, but we do have cold snaps. We used to live above the circle and I was amazed at the ravens. We regularly had temps -20 to -40 F for weeks and they still kept right on going. I've watched them pick up fish guts and fly at buildings to drop them so they would impact and break up. Then land and work on eating the little fragments. No water except ice and snow.
Birds are amazing creatures!

 

[appps]

No doubt, any heat 'bulb' should be in a ceramic socketed fixture.

@vehve @appps
Are the ceramic bulbs you are talking about the kind used for reptiles?
Do you think that a ceramic bulb would provide the kind of heat that this OP is talking about?
To keep coop (shivering? chickens) warm and water liquid?

Let's help this new chicken keeper learn about how to get their birds thru a cold winter.

sorry didnt realise I wasnt helping. Perhaps you are different in the states but over here ceramic fittings are not standard and most people probably wouldnt know they existed and I had to get one made up for me special at the local lighting store. Sorry if my comment appeared blindingly obvious to everyone else, was just trying to help.

Yes the ceramic bulbs are the same I believe because when I was trying to buy one for my crab tank I looked at the ones at the local feed stores and they were identical in wattage and look etc , they were the ones they use in brooder boxes. Will it heat a coop? Well I have no idea but mine gives out more heat that a light bulb so I guess its going to work better than a light bulb, and its not going to make the poor things sit in 24/7 light which to me seems a crueler thing than letting them get used to cold like any other bird.

To be perfectly honest though, after reading a zillion of these threads if I lived in a cold area like this I would never add heat. Far too many people loose un-aclimatised birds because they have a power outage and the chickens are not used to the cold and freeze or they burn their coop down by accident and far too many people in exceedingly cold areas even worse than this do just fine without any heat. I have read plenty of how do I heat my coop and my power went out and they died threads, have yet to see a single I didnt heat my coop and my birds died thread.

I would be listening to the poster above living in exactly the same city who has had no need to heat.

 

[Mflood]

Here are my coop pictures. I will warn you that our coop is pretty shabby looking. We don't have a lot of money (we have 7 kids and we are a one income family), and we needed "emergency" shelter for these chickens. We found 2 packing crates (4'Wx8'Lx2'H) and attached them together, cut out holes, put in hinges, carabiners and hardware cloth where necessary, nailed on an aluminum siding roof at an angle, slapped on some paint and called it good. It looks terrible, but it keeps them from being eaten. I am worried about the draft though. You can see that I put ventilation holes that are about 6"x4" squares. I put 1 of them on the top at one side and 2 of them at the bottom on the other side. They run around our fenced in yard all day and they seem happy. I'm doing the deep bed method for bedding, with straw, leaves and mostly pine shavings. The egg box, still needs a little bit of work, but we're brand new chicken owners. We are trying. I came up with the coop plans by myself, after doing a lot of research, but I feel like this coop is still pretty drafty. The doors and windows all are just cuts, so they all can let air in around the edges. I'd love some ideas. I know that this coop looks really redneck, but it was what we could afford. I am worried about the winter though. I want them to be warm enough. I am also very concerned about enough light, as I want them to lay eggs. Would battery powered Christmas lights be enough to make them lay without disturbing sleep? Maybe lights like these with a timer? Seeing my coop, would you really just can the heat lamp? I'm expecting that the coldest it will get is about -15 this winter. Usually our winters are damp and slushy. We get temps around 30's-40's most of the winter with colder windchills. But last winter was quite a bit colder...more like SE Wisconsin near the lake (where I grew up). People are saying that this winter might be the same. We had a lot of snow last year too. Well...here are the pictures. Don't be too hard on me guys!