Hey Northerners: What is the absolute coldest air temps your chickens have experienced happily!

[mrballance]

Kansas City, Missouri. We had the Polar Vortex come thru temps[The High] were below zero for two days with 4" of snow blowing around. The girls did fine, Had 2-3 eggs from six hens a day. The coop is not heated from lamps, just the dog dish water heater and the hens body heat. The temps in the coop didn't get below 20 degrees. Which surprised me totally. They don't like the snow, but when it was sunny they played in the dirt in the covered run. I have a automatic pop door it opens and shuts at dawn and dusk. I wouldn't think about leaving them inside all day. The right breed helps, I have Orpingtons, Brahmas and Black Stars.

 

[Chickens R Us]

What a change in temperatures Thursday was our coldest day this year -40F and that's not windchill. Today it was 27F so I turned off the red 100w heat bulbs, chickens seem a lot happier running around not huddled up on the roosts.

 

[Junibutt]

Mine survived the -12 to -17 last week. I did not have any heat for them so I closed the only vent they had for 3 days. I read somewhere that once the temp is below 10 degrees, chicken poop freezes immediately and chances of bad gases accumulating are close to none. So I left them water and food for 3 days, secured the doors and shut the vent. They did have dim light 24/7. I was praying they would be alive once the deep freeze was over.

3 Days later, I went in and to my surprise they still had some water left, but had eaten away 20 lbs worth of feed amongst the 9 of them. I guess they had nothing else to do. They were all doing fine even the ones which were molting. Very little frost bite on the combs. I hope we dont have another cold blast like this one. I feel really bad for them even though they are doing fine.

They still laid 6 eggs/day although they were all cracked and frozen so had to thrown them away.

 

[lorii34]

I Live in Indiana. As most of us did across the country, we got hit hard with 20 below temps and crazy windchills....not to mention
the 13 inches of snow. As i read your posts...my mind understands that my 8 chickens can handle sub arctic temps. However, I
literally couldn't sleep at night knowing they were out in that!!
I have an amazing husband that built a temporary coop in our garage to house our girls through the worse part of the storm. We did
not turn the heat on in the garage but it stayed above 20 for sure and my husband had 8 happy chickens and a very happy wife!!
I do not use artificial light or heat lamps in their coop at all yet i am getting 4-5 eggs a day!! I wasn't expecting that until the spring!
I LOVE being a chicken mom!!!

 

[theoldguy]

Gratz to the good husband and gratz to you for worrying about your chickens

 

[MaddBaggins]

For us in the Southwest, this is one of the mildest winters I can remember. I've barely worn pants more than 3 weeks this whole winter. It's been shorts and tshirts most of the time with a sweatshirt in the morning.

My flock has no idea what cold is.

 

[scubatoad]

Our girls were fine in their house in the low teens this winter in Texas. They even kept right on laying since we had the light in their house on a timer. It was incandescent so it didn't provide any heat.

 

[Scrambles55]

When we got into the minus temps here in North Idaho, I put a 60 watt bug light in and the girls liked it. They now have a 15 watt bulb come on early in the morning to provide extra light for laying.