Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

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Anyone elxperiencing any issues with combs and waddles in this wonderful winter weather?

Well, the Black Australorp cock has a badly frozen comb (it got down to -24 at my house two nights in a row, and was below zero at night for more than a week, which is unusual for here). All four males have the ends of their wattles frozen where the wattles get in the water pan when they drink. I had thought the GL Wyandottes would be a good choice (and none of their combs have frozen), but those long wattles are bad. I'm planning to get some White Chanteclers this year, and am going to try hatching some Buckeye eggs -- both of those breeds should be much better here.

Kathleen

 

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Big time.

They do lots better with night time temps in the teens than they do with them in the single digits.

Working on ways to warm up my coops (if it is even possible) in the winter time. I didn't realize it got so cold here. We're two USDA zones different than where we were in California and it sure is a big change. USDA says 9a with average lows of 20-25 but now we're in 7a with lows of 0-5 degrees. Record temps for this week are -25 degrees. I hope I don't see that!

Does anybody have any ideas on how to warm a barn without using electricity? I know some will say to just breed for winter hardiness or that I shouldn't have gotten hot weather birds and brought them to such a cold place. Well, I already had them when I moved here and they take the intense heat very well. The cold, not so much. I'm not willing to give them up. I like them very very much and I would rather make some modifications to my barns to help them through the winters than to chop all their heads off.

I've thought about a hot bed like you would do for a winter sprouting/maintaining area for plants but I believe those need full sun to maintain temps. Also thought about compost. That makes too much humidity though.

When I lived in California, I had a barn that had interior walls as well as exterior walls and that air space made quite a difference in insulation value. We closed it up at night. In the morning, it was warm inside that barn. I never noticed any condensation anywhere and the birds never had frostbite. It got colder than 20 degrees on occasion too but that temp now would be a very welcome low temp.

I plan to make big windows with plastic coverings next year (spring) that can let the sun into the coop during the day making nice warm sunbeams for my birds to bathe in during the day. Putting on inner walls is probably my best bet and then closing it up at night? I've been trying to increase ventilation like everybody says I should and I've been seeing more frostbite on younger birds. Usually it is the older males (1 year +) with the bigger combs and wattles that suffer the most.

Or, should I make double walls as mentioned above and then have ventilation and sleeping boxes?

I'm ready to pull my hair out and I feel so bad for my birds when I can't even go outside in the evening to clean up uneaten food and close up the building for five or ten minutes without my fingertips burning because they are so very cold!

We are not too far from you, in Eastern Oregon. We've already had the -24 or so temps (it was colder down by the river; I'm up a little bit on the hillside); I sure hope it doesn't come back.

I was raised in Alaska, near Delta Junction, and years ago, after my husband got out of the Air Force, we moved back up there, to Tok this time. The Interior of Alaska gets down to -50 degrees F pretty much every winter, and frequently gets much colder -- I've seen -70 a number of times, and one winter when I was small a neighbor's thermometer registered -82. Sometimes you get wind with that. While we were living in Tok, we had some friends who had built an underground barn. The upper two feet of the walls were above ground (and had long skinny windows for light), and the roof was earth-covered as well. They entered through a room where they kept feed and tools, so there were two doors between the animals (chickens and a couple of milk goats) and the outside. They said it never froze inside there. I don't know about air quality, though. Seems like it would have been a LOT of work to keep a set-up like that clean enough that the air wouldn't be bad for the animals to breathe.

You have beautiful birds -- if it wasn't for the big combs, they would handle your weather quite well. I wonder about developing a line of Andalusians that have a different comb? Make an American line, LOL!

Kathleen

 

[Rhinoman]

You could build a barn like a root cellar surrounded by earth, It'll keep from freezing in winter and stay cool in the summer?

 

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I really like those underground 'walipini' greenhouses. If I'm able to build on my bare land, I want to incorporate one attached to my house. I also want my barn to be attached to my house -- I'm getting too old to want to slip-slide up and down hills carrying water and feed in the winter! Don't think I'd keep chickens in the greenhouse attached to the house (odors and dust would be an issue), but maybe have a second greenhouse attached to the south side of the barn. That could house the chickens in the winter, and grow green feed for them and the goats and the cow.

As I mentioned above, I'm going to try White Chanteclers and Buckeyes this year, but I've really been wondering if it wouldn't be better to go with a smaller breed that eats less, such as a RC Leghorn or Ancona, or maybe even a Kraienkoppe (lots less wattle there to freeze). It's just two of us living here -- we eat a lot of eggs, but a smaller chicken would be fine for us for meat.

Kathleen

 

[neftaball]

What about somehow adapting a system using compost for heating. It is used for greenhouses sometimes

http://www.uvm.edu/sustain/clean-en...ower-using-compost-power-to-heat-a-greenhouse

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-agriculture/how-heat-your-chickens-compost.html

 

[Lacy Blues]

Thank you neftaball. I am working from all kinds of angles to get this problem resolved. This is a possibility.

 

[suncatcher]

I really like those underground 'walipini' greenhouses.  If I'm able to build on my bare land, I want to incorporate one attached to my house.  I also want my barn to be attached to my house -- I'm getting too old to want to slip-slide up and down hills carrying water and feed in the winter!  Don't think I'd keep chickens in the greenhouse attached to the house (odors and dust would be an issue), but maybe have a second greenhouse attached to the south side of the barn.  That could house the chickens in the winter, and grow green feed for them and the goats and the cow.

As I mentioned above, I'm going to try White Chanteclers and Buckeyes this year, but I've really been wondering if it wouldn't be better to go with a smaller breed that eats less, such as a RC Leghorn or Ancona, or maybe even a Kraienkoppe (lots less wattle there to freeze).  It's just two of us living here -- we eat a lot of eggs, but a smaller chicken would be fine for us for meat.

Kathleen

Cool idea on the compost, never thought of that, it does generarte heat.

 

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Market growers used to use hot-boxes, or heated cold frames, to keep crops growing in the winter. The heat was provided by fresh horse manure buried well below the earth that the plants were in -- you don't want the roots going into the pack of fresh manure, or they'll be burned -- too much nitrogen. So it's bottom heat. I don't know if it would be even remotely feasible to bury a couple of feet of fresh horse manure under the floor of a chicken coop. If you didn't have your own horses, you'd have to truck in quite a bit of manure, and then there would be all the digging -- twice a year, as it has to be removed in the spring. You'd probably have the best gardens around, though, with all that composted manure every year!

HUGE compost piles are being used to produce hot water, and I think even to heat buildings (via pipes run through the piles), but again, it would be a LOT of material to come up with. Might not be too hard to do in areas with more humidity and more plant growth, but in the high desert of Nevada and the eastern side of Oregon where I live, it could be difficult.

Kathleen

 

[suncatcher]

I may have to try that with the horse manure. I imagine you would also have to have lots of ventilation in your coop, not sure what kind of fumes it gives off

 

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As long as the manure is buried under several inches of earth, I don't think you'd have to worry about fumes from it. That's how they did it for those hot-boxes, but they 1. had plenty of manual labor, and 2. weren't trying to heat anything as large as a chicken coop. If you try it, please post how it works!

Kathleen