Heat lamp or no heat lamp for cold weather?

[furbabymum]

Any building, even a house, with soffit vents, ridge vents, cable end vents etc, can find blowing, dry, powder snow filtering in. Some attics of houses have this issue and sometimes the homeowner isn't aware of it.

The wind can blow dry snow in directly and/or the snow powder can be "sucked" in through soffits or overhands in other areas. Typically, this is result of an overhang without enough length, roof without enough pitch or other architectural design flaws creating issues that the builder didn't see coming. Special care has to be taken in areas with dry blowing snow, to prevent this. Without seeing your barn, it is difficult to make recommendations. Fixing the issue might prove to be simple to extremely difficult. Sorry.

Mostly it's just that I live in Wyoming and the winds are hellacious and unpredictable. I do have some pictures though:

Looking at the barn opening from outside.

This is standing in the opening of the barn. As you can see there is a large open area on the right. You can barely see the door to the "coop" on the left. The wall on the left does not go all the way up to the ceiling which is my venting.

And this is standing in the back of the coop. You can see the door to the main barn and the light shining in from the barn opening. I have walked into this room in the past to find every single surface absolutely covered in snow. It is not getting in through anywhere but the barn opening. The crazy thing is that the barn opening is facing south and our wind NORMALLY blows from the east. It gets all crazy and circular a lot in the winter. If you live in the south just imagine a hurricane without the moisture. We get THAT type of wind. SO I have 22 chickens and 5 guineas that will be staying in here this winter. You can barely see on the far left corner of the coop picture 12 of my chickens hanging out on the ground so you can see how large the coop is. I don't believe their body heat will be able to keep it warm if it's getting coated in snow.

So, should I tarp the vents or no???

 

[Fred's Hens]

With that space available, I'd not worry about the barn at all. What I would do is create pens inside and provide coops inside that would be dry, wind free, snow free, etc. That, to my thinking, would be the easiest solution. It would not take much to make a roosting shelter for your two dozen chickens and a few guineas. The barn itself is too large to work on. It was built for a different purpose.

I'd take it in a heart beat on our 5 acre piece up the road.

 

[mstricer]

Last winter I had 4 bantams in a 4x8 coop, no insulation and the run covered with tarps an plastic around it. Everything was fine, now that was last winter. We are insulating this year. Just a little note the year we had snow from Oct til nearly may I heated my coops with a 250 watt bulb, I will never do that again. One they don't need it and two my electric bill was over 500$ for one month. Ouch

 

[furbabymum]

With that space available, I'd not worry about the barn at all. What I would do is create pens inside and provide coops inside that would be dry, wind free, snow free, etc. That, to my thinking, would be the easiest solution. It would not take much to make a roosting shelter for your two dozen chickens and a few guineas. The barn itself is too large to work on. It was built for a different purpose.

I'd take it in a heart beat on our 5 acre piece up the road.

We've kept horses and cows in the barn previously so it's had a lot of use. I figure I can get a little wild and crazy with my chicken purchasing before we outgrow anything. I'll make sure to create a few small shelters in there for them then. Thanks for the help!

 

[7L Farm]

With that space available, I'd not worry about the barn at all. What I would do is create pens inside and provide coops inside that would be dry, wind free, snow free, etc. That, to my thinking, would be the easiest solution. It would not take much to make a roosting shelter for your two dozen chickens and a few guineas. The barn itself is too large to work on. It was built for a different purpose.

I'd take it in a heart beat on our 5 acre piece up the road.

Exactly, I would add walls & create a coop in your barn. You could then add small vents where needed that you could open & close depending on which way the winds blowing. You could add a small auto pop door as well. Maybe Add a human door to get in & out of the coop. Man you could do a lot with that barn its endless. Here's my barn & I haven't even used the inside yet. I have one pen at 500 sq ft the other is 330 sq ft. & two small pens as well. I have a ton of space inside thats just sitting there.

 

[off-grid hen]

I'm not responding to any questions here specifically, but I wanted to add my experience. I am SO GLAD I went with the woods style coop. I built one 8 x 16. (my coop thread says 6 x 16, but that's incorrect.)

See this post: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/445004/woods-style-house-in-the-winter

Here's my coop. I updated today, new photos page 3. I can't seem to edit the post, as it was originally made before the BYC changeover.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/499098/woods-on-wheels-update-added-more-photos/20

I don't heat my coop. It really is all about managing humidity and providing proper ventilation. On the days where temps only got to the teens or single digits, I gave my girls some homemade suet. I melted beef suet from the butcher (you can use butter in a pinch) and mixed in some black oil sunflower seeds, a little scratch, and some layer pellets. Just pop out of the mold into the coop.