Heater Or No Heater, That Is the question

[Mrs MIA]

Quote:
We have girls that sleep outside at 0°F voluntarily... sexlinks and blue orpingtons.

I think your Orpington girls will be just fine as long as they stay dry.

 

[silkiechicken]

It was in the teens, not as cold as 0F... but had 5 silkies in a tractor style coop survive the winter with no problem.

Matter of fact, bad picture here:

She and none of the others had ANY frost bite despite frozen crests from dunking them into water.

 

[nurse_turtle]

I, too, am in the foothills of NC and will not be adding supplemental heat. I will be placing small aquarium heaters into their large bucket/nipple waterers, mostly for my convenience. Nature knows best. I will be covering 3 sides of my open coop with empty feed bags.

 

[yankeedoodle300]

OK. I Just did not want to Freak out, Too Much!

Thanks for the Info & Advice!

BYC,to the rescue Again!

Thanks guys,

... Yank ...

 

[greenhorn]

I'm going to insulate my coop because we are going to put an automatic drinker in there and it will surely freeze if we don't. I'll be putting a couple heat lamps over the drinker and a couple over the roosting area. Chickens may have feathers but the last 2 winters my roosters got frostbite pretty bad on their combs, the hens even got some. It has to hurt and don't make sense for them to suffer if they don't have to. We are going to start raising breeds with rose combs so our birds won't have to deal with that in the winter.

 

[Aria]

We are in New York and we get COLD temperatures. We do NOT have a heated Barn.

There are no drafts and we keep our windows opend a crack.

We do have heaters on our Water. With the heaters you don't need to carry water daily.

We have Silkie Chickens and a comfortable non heated Barn. Regards, Aria

 

[pritchro]

I am on the shores of Lake Ontario in Upstate NY...I bring the chickens into an unheated garage as it we would likely lose the coop in the snow. It is not unusual to get over three hundred inches of snow per year here.