Ever Wonder?

[greenmulberry]

I do not heat my coop, but it is draft free. I also don't keep any fragile breeds.

I certainly do have a heater for the water. It would freeze almost instantly with the temps we have been having.


I tell ya, go out on a nice -10 day, take your gloves off, and wiggle your fingers under the feathers of a buff orpington or speckled sussex! They are HOT under those feathers,

 

[marytoast]

I didn't mean to stir the pot.

 

[ranchhand]

Quote:
No, it's ok, I think we're all a bit testy with this cold in the air! I said, no, the chickens will be ok, they're made to survive any conditions, descended from dinosaurs, etc. Then I ran out the door with a heat lamp and a radiator! Chickens today are not the same "tough old birds" they used to be!

I tend to blend/blur the line between working birds and pets. Mine have plenty of bedding, and some heat to go to if they need it, and access to the great outdoors when they want it.

The best thing to do is get a breed that is able to handle your particular climate. Then deal with situations as they crop up.

Sorry you felt you had to apologize! BYC is actually all nice folks!

 

[blueseal]

my birds made it thru the coldest day and night this winter with no heat. it was -24 below here this morning at 4am. went down to coop gave them warm water at 8am.they were fine and dandy gave them some corn and they even layed 9 eggs today . warm up next week 20 and 30s and also snow sunday and monday ugghh. oh well just as long as it warms up.

 

[spatcher]

I think it comes down to the fact that with the breeding techniques in place today (cold weather vs warm weather birds) it depends on what you have. If you have birds that are "heat tolerant" you might need auxiliary warmth in say, Minnesota. That makes sense to me I guess and probably anwers my original question. Thanks for all the responses....I havent stopped learning yet! LOL

 

[cmom]

My grandparents didn't even have a coop. The birds layed eggs usually in one area of the barn in some hay.

 

[EngieKisses]

I realize that by living in Northeast Oklahoma, that we do not get as cold as a lot of people on here. However, we have been getting down to the single digits for lows, and only into the teens for the highs.

That being said, we chose not to heat our coops. They are draft free and dry. They have all survived just fine. We give them a little scratch in the morning and the evenings when it is really cold. I was told by one of my great aunts that if you heat the coops then the chickens will become reliant on that and in the event of a power outage they would probably all freeze to death since they were used to it.

Also, by not heating the coops, the chickens will be able to build a stronger immune system then if they were kept in a heated area.

We have 6 Ameraucana's, 2 Australorps, 6 bantam Cochins, and 1 EE. All healthy and happy. They did take a laying break and have just recently began laying again. They are all at least 7 months old now though.

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
That is such an important factor that people tend to overlook! Our climate in SW Arkansas involves summers hotter and more humid than anywhere I've ever lived - and as a military brat I've lived all over the country. On the other hand our winters can go either way, very mild or cold with alot of ice; though snow is rare. On top of that I have a medical condition that can become quite painful and damaging if I have to spend too much time in the cold outdoors.
It's for this reason I picked a breed (brahma) that can handle the heat and the cold with minimal fuss. Are there other breeds that I like and would love to have, if it weren't for the fact that they are not suited to our climate? Yes! But it wouldn't be fair to the birds and it would turn caring for my chickens from the joy it is into a chore.

 

[Akane]

People kept a few of the hardiest breeds in the northern climates. I bet if you walked around on farms 50-100years ago you wouldn't see even 1/10th of the breeds you'll see now. Bantams weren't so common and even my grandparents only kept the odd bantam to set eggs for them since the layers weren't as good of mothers. They also had excessive amounts of straw around since straw is often a useless byproduct of producing grains. When my mom was growing up and even occasionally when I was growing up the straw bales would be stacked around the walls of the barn, coop, etc... especially if you had animals giving birth early in the year. We've done it before for horses that foaled in January. Another thing is that more animals were kept. My grandparents flock was in the 100s and when all crammed into the coop they probably raised it 10-20 degrees. My 18 chickens don't do quite the same. Last if it turned really cold like it has lately you brought the most important animals inside and lived with them and lost some of the others. In a lot of cultures especially from northern areas it was common before electricity to have part of an animal shelter connected to the human's living area so that both would heat each other.

Death on a farm is a common thing. If a rooster in my grandparents flock got frostbite you wouldn't see them wondering about going to the vet to treat it. It either recovers on it's own or turns into food. Then people either don't breed from that animal or they start practices like dubbing to prevent it without expending more effort and money providing heat. My mom talks about her grandparents hatching chicks in the spring so that they could butcher half in the fall and have the other half as backups for the number that died or were butchered over the winter. They didn't keep them all alive through the winter. They hatched more than they lost. The same happens with wild animals. Many many birds actually freeze to death or starve over winter. They are just eaten by things so you don't see them and more hatch than die to keep the population stable. When fewer are hatched than die is when we see endangered lists.

 

[digitS']

The native galliform birds we have are grouse and turkeys. Chickens would never exist so far from the equator without human intervention.

I took an interest in wild turkeys lately since there are so many showing up around here locally in recent years. I don't believe that there was a wild turkey within hundreds of miles of here when Lewis and Clark came thru. (And, I showed up not long after

).

What I've read is that up to 60% of the wild turkeys die during severe Winters.

This may not be the result of cold temperatures alone but there's the harsh story on our chickens' native cousin.

Steve