Heater or heat panel -10

[Three Stents]

Ah yes, another heater/no heater debate. Turn the heat off in your house then. Will you survive, yes. You'll huddle up with others, wrap up with extra blankets, ect. I'll be insulating my coop as the days go by as it will also help during those long 90 degree and triple digit days. There is nothing wrong with temperature control in your coop. And don't start with "the coop may burn down using a heating device", so could your house......

 

[Debbie292d]

I am uncertain whether your response is intended to support the OP assertions or not.

Neither. There are some good points, but a couple of statements that I don't necessarily agree with. So I just posted another way of looking at it, but in my case, backing up what I said.

As you state on BYC we can "state our opinions or experiences". You have done this and folks can accept or reject for their own usage.

Exactly!!

My apologies to any I might offend.

None taken.

 

[NatJ]

I am uncertain whether your response is intended to support the OP assertions or not.

Your response is very specific to a single breed and to personal comfort unlike the OP's very broad brush statements. As you state on BYC we can "state our opinions or experiences". You have done this and folks can accept or reject for their own usage.

The OP has not done this. Rather, very broad statements are made with very specific allegations that are not supported by even the citations she provides.

BYC is frequented by a community that ranges from neophytes to people with decades of experience. I am concerned that the some in the neophyte group would take OP's statements as fact and act on them.

My apologies to any I might offend.

Problem: you are mis-using "OP"

It means the original poster, the person who started the thread. That is not the person making blanket statements about all chickens needing heat at certain temperatures.

The original poster is ASKING about heat, trying to check what they have read from various sources. There is no problem with questions like that.

It's easy enough to go back and double-check. The person who started the thread is IowaCHKN. That is the OP. That is not the username on any of the posts that you are criticizing.

Edit: I see it's been fixed

 

[Ted Brown]

@NatJ Thank you, clumsy mistake I will correct.

 

[2ndTink]

Found a study (which has citations to other studies for a deeper dive): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741227/#B7-animals-13-03824

And an extension service article:

https://extension.umn.edu/small-scale-poultry/caring-chickens-cold-weather

This is interesting. I looked through the article and also most of the citations in it, not all of them would open, and not all are actually about chickens so I skipped over the ones studying rats, geese, and such.

This is a quote from the top link posted:

"Cold stress is considered an environmental stress and is an important managemental factor in regions where winter temperatures drop below 18 °C. Although a low temperature lowered the productive performance of laying hens, there are still unanswered questions as to the physiological changes that occur when they are exposed to low temperature, especially changes in antioxidants and stress indicators, which prompted us to set up the current study. Laying hens reared at low temperature (12 ± 4.5 °C) showed impaired laying performance compared with laying hens reared at normal temperature (24 ± 3 °C). "
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741227/#B7-animals-13-03824

This is looking at regions where winter temps get below 18 deg C, which is really interesting because this is 64.4 deg F. The study looked at hens and their stress response at 12 deg C which is 53.6 deg F. I would be so happy to have 12 deg C right now and so would all my chickens!!! The OP stated they have a low of -15 deg F which equates to -26 deg C. I would really like to see this study replicated at 0 deg C (32 deg F) and -17 deg C (0 deg F) which would give us a really neat indicator into the stress response of hens in some pretty common winter weather.

The lowest temperature I could find in their supporting literature was 6 deg C which is 42.8 deg F, and still above freezing.

I wonder if any studies looking at these same indicators have been done at and below freezing? Commercial poultry houses heat their barns through the winter but I could never afford to keep my coops as warm as they do. I'm trying to remember what temperature a guy told me, but it was pretty laughable, 60 deg F or something, yeah, not happening in my coops, I'd be flat broke with the cost of electricity

 

[Three Stents]

I wonder if any studies looking at these same indicators have been done at and below freezing? Commercial poultry houses heat their barns through the winter but I could never afford to keep my coops as warm as they do. I'm trying to remember what temperature a guy told me, but it was pretty laughable, 60 deg F or something, yeah, not happening in my coops, I'd be flat broke with the cost of electricity

insulation will help for starters.......

 

[2ndTink]

insulation will help for starters.......

If I knew when I started with chickens what I do now, I'd have done a lot of things differently.

 

[Three Stents]

If I knew when I started with chickens what I do now, I'd have done a lot of things differently.

like? pray tell

 

[The Bougie Coop]

@The Bougie Coop

What real evidence do you have to support your assertions?

Veterinarians boarded in Poultry Medicine state the same things I did above. Dr. Blayne Mosizek, DACPV specifically discusses this issue and asserts chickens need heat under 50F.

They’re your birds and your property and that means you can do whatever you want with your livestock, but if you do it you should be doing it with full knowledge of modern studies. Knowledge is power.

I think it’s ridiculous that people are “worried” that I am giving bad information when I say chickens should have the choice to be able to warm up in the cold. Are ya’ll for real?

And another thing to consider is that you may think your birds are just fine, but chickens are prey animals and prey animals are very, very good at not showing weakness but that doesn’t mean they aren’t having problems. I am sure everyone here has had birds that were ‘just fine’ and then were just dead.

I am not going to argue over this with anyone. I am going to share the knowledge. If people want to insist chickens don’t need heat based on “it’s always been done that way and they’ve been just fine”, then I will share science that says it’s not.

https://modernpoultry.media/cold-te...-poultry-health-and-welfare/?mp=1761680868201

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8267593/

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/12/1769

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741227/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119444192

https://actavet.vfu.cz/76/8/17/

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/12/1769

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/animal-science/articles/10.3389/fanim.2021.775311/full

https://extension.umn.edu/small-scale-poultry/caring-chickens-cold-weather

 

[Ted Brown]

@The Bougie Coop

You have made the following assertion: "As soon as the temp drops below 50F, they start to show cold stress."

Rather than cite a list of documents (some of which directly contradict your assertion) that virtually no one will read it would be more useful if you could provide direct reference within those documents that unequivocally support what you say.

You have not done that and, as such, your response is not worth the paper it is written on (in this case no paper, no worth even worse).

In your 1st paragraph above you state that "Dr. Blayne Mosizek DACPV specifically discusses this issue and asserts chickens need heat under 50F" yet you do not provide a link to the document that supports this. Without that your statement is just more words without value.