Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

...so I have caved on the whole heated coop thing. Yes, those are flat panel radiant heaters in the pic below. I'm done with the mess that is this winter and having anxiety every time the temperature is in danger zones if a bird ends up not in the pile. I keep hearing how this is the worst winter for my area in a decade or more so I don't feel too bad about doing this. I have done all the math for the load on the cables. I have two hens not finished with their molts and three more with very messed up molting patterns due to the weird weather patterns this year. I questioned whether these heaters would have any effect in such a cavernous space. The chickens seem to think so - they were clustered around the heaters at roost time which is very different from their normal roost pattern.

The bean flock also has a heater in their smaller coop. Vanilla Bean got his comb somewhat toasted on a night when it was supposed to be 5F and was -10F instead. He'll be fine with mostly just a peel, but I don't want that to happen to him again. His flock overheats rapidly in the house so I can't really bring the inside overnight; my hope is the single heater in their small coop will keep the space modestly warmer than ambient. I was testing it earlier today and that seemed to be the case.

My other various chickens have no heaters in their sleeping areas (Goobs only has one in his little run) so they are in the house right now. Goober and his lady friend are in my home office tonight (he's on my lap as I type). His brothers, Squeak and Tengu are in pet carriers elsewhere in the house.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Aaaaaand after all my grand heater setup and all of my "well I can't really bring these and those chickens in the house because blah blah"...I currently have 23 chickens in my house tonight and 0 chickens outside. Yep. Today's high was miserable and the predicted low for tonight in my area just keeps getting lower. It was originally supposed to be -8F, which would have been ok, but the predicted value is down to -15F now and the actuals I see on my various thermometers are often lower than the predicted values. If the pattern of predictions being too high holds, this could well be a -20F night for me. Maybe the heaters would be enough through that to keep my birds healthy, but maybe not. I know the Minnesota and Canada folks deal with worse but none of my birds and setups have seen -20F before, especially not with the weird molting issues, and I'm not taking chances since I don't have a good handle yet on how much the heaters actually help and don't have a way to remotely monitor the in-coop temperatures.

In the house, I've lowered thermostats somewhat to try to avoid chickens overheating, and I've placed the main flock and the beans in the coldest parts of the house. It's a balancing act though, because I also have to be on guard for pipes freezing if I let the house get too cold. It's already almost -10F outside right now and there is a lot of progressively colder night left to go.

Once the low temperatures bounce back to a cozy 0F, dare I say even a sweltering 5F on the other side of that, then I will be a lot more comfortable relying on the panel heaters once more to get my wonky molting birds through the night.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Oh lord, it’s just after 9am and still -10F out there. And with sun. Warm up faster, dangit! Still got 23 very grumpy house birds. Definitely got down to -15F earlier, probably colder. I somehow fell back asleep for a bit after the 5am crowing session so I missed the lowest low. And right here are three of the reasons everyone is still in the house while I wait for more reasonable temperatures. Two wonky molters and poor Junior. Junior’s comb got toasted during the daytime yesterday when it was single digits. I think he just spent too much time in the run guarding hens making food/water runs vs staying in the more wind-protected shed coop. He takes his job very seriously and doesn’t look after his own wellbeing as much as his brother does. I’m going to have to separate him for individual feeding to make sure he eats well before going back outside (assuming the promised above-zero temps actually arrive!).

 

[DonyaQuick]

Got confirmation from someone else that my area did indeed see -20F in the very early AM. Brutal.

The emergincy house chicken setups are all taken apart and put away now, but I got some pictures of them just before taking everyone back outside.

Mr Cuddles Junior keeping order with the younger ladies (omg he was SUCH A GOOD BOY through this - model citizen). This is a modular cube I build to quarantine and integrate my very first rooster. It's gotten so much use since then - brooder cube more than once, broody breaker box a couple times, and now a last-minute house chicken box.

Mr Monster keeping the older ladies out of trouble in my dog's crate. Monster actually slept overnight in the white cube with Junior and the young hens since I don't like to separate those boys for too long (they are like each others' comfort blankets in times of stress), but after dawn the buff ladies were quite upset that they didn't have either of their roosters.

(Yes I know there shouldn't really be stuff set on top the dog crate but I was having to shuffle a lot of stuff around last night and this morning)

My dog being rather unimpressed with the above situation. She's often a big grump, but she was very sweet and patient through this ordeal. And yes those are unfortunately billows of her hair in the back...weird weather has her confused about shedding too.

And then the easiest batch - the bean flock. They are all lovely affectionate birds but, um...not the smartest lol. So play pen panels with a fitted sheet over the top easily keeps that flock contained even if the play pen panels didn't keep the shavings contained very well.

 

[DonyaQuick]

A few interesting observations from using the panel heaters now that I have several temp/humidity sensors installed about that let me monitor remotely.

• 4x panel heaters at 200W can raise the overall temperature inside the 12x16ft shed coop 2-4F depending on wind. That's measured from the opposite wall, so it will be warmer right next to the heaters (still need to move the mounting peg over to measure that better).
• 1x panel heater at 200W raises the temperature of the 4x5ft bean hut by about 8-10F pretty uniformly within the space. This is a massive strength of having a smaller coop when heating is an option but also means I need to be more mindful of turning the panel OFF when daytime and warmer temps come.
• The big beans and their cochin baby beans should be the most temperature hardy bunch I have but they also like their heater panel the most. They run around and play outside like it's nothing in single digits, but sometimes I find a baby or two inside the coop literally snuggling with the panel like they do when I give them a hug. Also now if the ambient temperature drops below 15F at dusk and the heater is off, I find the lot of them worshiping the cold heater panel instead of roosting until I cave and turn it on for them. I've created a little cozy heater cult. They'll be all clustered around it rubbing their little faces on it looking for the warmth. This includes Vanilla Bean, who actually started whining at point. Once heating is restored, then they get on the roost bars and go to bed properly.

 

[DonyaQuick]

What a past few days.

Thursday: doors on the bean prefab were so blocked by ice, snow, and completely insane frost heave (it’s like 6-8in some spots!) that I couldn’t get into them. Broke a door. Couldn’t get that off the hinges so it got sawed off. Questionable uses of various power tools ensued. Beans now have at least one workable door now.

Friday: fun with hound hunters’ dogs harassing my birds(who were safe thankfully). Well, fun for my dog at least. So much for all that “oh you don’t want to risk your pyr to our hounds” stuff the hunters try to persuade me with. Hounds can tree a black bear because the bear is fundamentally a coward that just wants to live another day. My dog, on the other hand, may be totally safe with chickens but is also a total psycho who lives another day for the chance eat a hound sandwich. So no, hunter dudes, your dogs will actually just pee themselves while beating a hasty retreat from mine.

Saturday: I got a bad feeling about the supposed low of 2F last night. I was right. -9 somewhere around 3AM and that wasn’t the coldest. Probably was around -15F. So here we are again waiting for it to be positive digits outside with everyone in the house…

 

[DonyaQuick]

Can winter please stop already...the ice is 4in thick on my driveway. Surely that is enough! I need spring to get in here because I need to hatch bean eggs. I need to see the big derpy babies that will come from this Vanilla Bean boy and his fan club - and I need to leave myself enough time to get more pullets for main flock if those are all cockerels LOL. But the polar vortexes (vorticies? vortepie? vortuples?) have to stop first.

 

[DonyaQuick]

So in an effort to actually try to plan stuff this time instead of letting summer roll around and then praying to see pullets instead of straight at the feed store...I have just ordered myself a few black Ameraucana pullets for mid-July from Cackle. This is also because crazy little Raven needs some better crazy friends. She unfortunately got her beard slowly removed this winter by one of her very "helpful" egger friends, and I know being the odd one out with traits like beards and feather feet can lead to that kind of thing even when it's not aggressive (...and honestly I was kinda hoping for more beardies when I got the eggers...so there are really no downsides lol). I could have scheduled a somewhat sooner arrival date but the May-then-July chick times two years back worked out pretty well. If I don't get a broody soon enough, I can always fire up the incubator for the first set.

 

[fuzzi]

I

So in an effort to actually try to plan stuff this time instead of letting summer roll around and then praying to see pullets instead of straight at the feed store...I have just ordered myself a few black Ameraucana pullets for mid-July from Cackle. This is also because crazy little Raven needs some better crazy friends. She unfortunately got her beard slowly removed this winter by one of her very "helpful" egger friends, and I know being the odd one out with traits like beards and feather feet can lead to that kind of thing even when it's not aggressive (...and honestly I was kinda hoping for more beardies when I got the eggers...so there are really no downsides lol). I could have scheduled a somewhat sooner arrival date but the May-then-July chick times two years back worked out pretty well. If I don't get a broody soon enough, I can always fire up the incubator for the first set.

I was very pleased with my experience with Cackle. I ordered 5 sexed chicks, they sent 6. Two turned out to be males, so they refunded me, and then I sold the boys at auction.

 

[DonyaQuick]

My phone told me there had been 0 inches of snow yesterday morning. Ok I know I have small hands, but still kiiiiinda feels like a weather person somewhere did a goof with that.

Meanwhile, Harley is finishing up an ill-timed February molt where she dumped basically everything except her neck and wing feathers. She says "stop looking at my weird little pink tail nib!" Sorry Harley...but I will not stop looking at it until you grow your tail back. The wiggly tail nib is just too amusing of an anatomical feature.

I was very pleased with my experience with Cackle. I ordered 5 sexed chicks, they sent 6. Two turned out to be males, so they refunded me, and then I sold the boys at auction.

I've somehow never had an oops boy in sexed pullets. That's 17 no oopses so far I think...I was really expecting one with my cochins since they're supposedly trickier. My luck with that has to run out at some point! I think the black Ameraucanas have even less of an accuracy than the cochins do so I am perhaps setting myself up for it lol.