Hi!
So long story short, we are in north central PA. It's 19 degrees right now, which is basically a heat wave compared to the temps we have had over the week. And it's supposed to be a LOT colder this weekend. We have over 60 birds, and the hens seem to be mostly handling the cold just fine so far. However, our roosters and their combs are not.
We have probably about 24 fully grown roosters (because we also have chicks who we don't know all the sexes of yet) and about 15 of them have single combs who have pretty good frostbite (some not very bad, some VERY bad looking). Our roosters with pea combs don't seem to have a problem. We have been going out every single night, rubbing olive oil all over their combs, waddles, and feet.
And this has been helping. However, we have some who just seem to be really bad. Today before we oiled them we gave them some rosemary oil in scrambled egg to help with any pain. So when we oiled, there was a big difference, they were a LOT calmer about it.
But we feel so bad for them! Is there anything else we can do to help them? I realize most people probably eat any roosters before they get this bad.
Our barn is not heated, and we are using the deep litter method. Our barn isn't heated, because we read in several places a heated barn won't do chickens any favors. We don't want to need to worry about the electricity going off and them dying because of it, we want them to be at least a little cold hardy. And that's the surprising thing- most of the roosters who are having frostbite problems are supposed to be cold hardy. Our buff orpingtons and sex link roosters have it the worst. Our australorp also has it, but not quite as bad. And then we also have a cream legbar rooster and svart hona rooster, and some bantams who we expected to need to oil. But we did not expect our buff orpingtons to be having problems in the cold!!
If we absolutely had to, we could move them into the garage with a heat lamp. But, it is a lot of them, and it doesn't seem practical to keep them in the garage all winter. But then what if the electricity went out? Then what? They would be even less adapted to the cold.
We have heard of dubbing, and thought it was terrible. But would that keep them from suffering throughout the winter? We really don't want to, but don't want them to suffer either. It seems like with dubbing it just takes a couple days to heal and is all over with. Would that be more humane than letting them have frostbite? I'm curious to know everyone's thoughts on that.
Or does anyone have any other methods of treating and/or preventing frostbite??
So long story short, we are in north central PA. It's 19 degrees right now, which is basically a heat wave compared to the temps we have had over the week. And it's supposed to be a LOT colder this weekend. We have over 60 birds, and the hens seem to be mostly handling the cold just fine so far. However, our roosters and their combs are not.
We have probably about 24 fully grown roosters (because we also have chicks who we don't know all the sexes of yet) and about 15 of them have single combs who have pretty good frostbite (some not very bad, some VERY bad looking). Our roosters with pea combs don't seem to have a problem. We have been going out every single night, rubbing olive oil all over their combs, waddles, and feet.
And this has been helping. However, we have some who just seem to be really bad. Today before we oiled them we gave them some rosemary oil in scrambled egg to help with any pain. So when we oiled, there was a big difference, they were a LOT calmer about it.
But we feel so bad for them! Is there anything else we can do to help them? I realize most people probably eat any roosters before they get this bad.
Our barn is not heated, and we are using the deep litter method. Our barn isn't heated, because we read in several places a heated barn won't do chickens any favors. We don't want to need to worry about the electricity going off and them dying because of it, we want them to be at least a little cold hardy. And that's the surprising thing- most of the roosters who are having frostbite problems are supposed to be cold hardy. Our buff orpingtons and sex link roosters have it the worst. Our australorp also has it, but not quite as bad. And then we also have a cream legbar rooster and svart hona rooster, and some bantams who we expected to need to oil. But we did not expect our buff orpingtons to be having problems in the cold!!
If we absolutely had to, we could move them into the garage with a heat lamp. But, it is a lot of them, and it doesn't seem practical to keep them in the garage all winter. But then what if the electricity went out? Then what? They would be even less adapted to the cold.
We have heard of dubbing, and thought it was terrible. But would that keep them from suffering throughout the winter? We really don't want to, but don't want them to suffer either. It seems like with dubbing it just takes a couple days to heal and is all over with. Would that be more humane than letting them have frostbite? I'm curious to know everyone's thoughts on that.
Or does anyone have any other methods of treating and/or preventing frostbite??
