Hoop Coop--zone 4 winter questions

[countrygoddess]

Hi! I've browsed through many of the Hoop Coop threads and have done searches using key words specific to my questions but didn't really find an answer to my specific questions, so I'll start a new thread...

I live in Vermont and our Hardiness Zone is 4 (-25 at times). My husband and I have kept a few hens in a small house for many years now but this year we got 32 chicks, of which probably 15 will remain at the end of the year (the rest will reside in our freezer), so we'll need something bigger. We have a pasture adjacent to our house on which we plan to keep a movable chicken house with Premier One fencing so the birds can forage outside (BTW, Premier One poultry fence is fabulous--we've never lost a girl to weasels, fishers, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, skunks, stray dogs... nothing! And during the summer their house is open 24/7). Recently I discovered Hoop Coops and am now obsessed with them. In the next couple of weeks we will need to build ours.

My questions are:
1) Does anyone have experience with keeping chickens in a Hoop Coop through a New England Winter?
2) What color tarp do you use on top? In summer? In winter? I'm thinking dark for cool in summer and clear for a greenhouse/warming effect in winter. They'll have some access to outside during the day in winter so the house will be open during the day and I plan on making sure there's plenty of ventilation when it's closed up. I also plan on using deep bedding in the winter for warmth from the ground up.
3) I saw the blog of a farm that insulates with that silver bubble wrap insulation stuff in the winter. They had their Hoop Coop completely enveloped in it. Is all that really necessary in Vermont? It seemed like overkill. Thoughts?
4) Do you think it would be a good idea to stack hay bales up around the outside, one or two bales high, like you see around 100-yr-old farmhouse foundations in the winter?

Thanks for all your ideas and thoughts!

-Heather

 

[cassidy22]

I'll see if I can answer your question...

I'm in Zone 5, Colorado. It can get cold, can dump snow, and we have HEAVY winds, so we have to adjust for the wind. I use hoop coops ALL spring, summer and fall. My meat birds live in them, my young birds live in them (until they are big enough to get into our real coops - one is built on an old ford truck, so they have to be able to get up to the tailgate)

In winter, the hoops get put up (we use billboard tarps, colored side IN to provide shade in the summer, so the white side is OUT)

However, one winter, we used leftover greenhouse plastic and build a "hoop coop" for the birds. We surrounded it with haybales inside AND out to keep drafts and snow drifts out. The greennhouse plastic kept it warm inside and on really cold and snowy days, where they didn't want to come outside, they could still get sun. Their waterers even stayed defrosted INSIDE that hoop coop. However, the expensive greenhouse plastic didn't last more than one winter. Birds peck EVERYTHING, so any bug, water droplets or anything they could reach, got pecked, and eventually they put holes in the plastic. Big ones. They still stayed warm and alive inside there, but we'd have to recover it each winter for them, or pur a solid polycarb side on it that they couldn't peck through.

It worked, but we wanted a more permanent home. Our coop on the old truck is mobile year round, has a poly carb roof to let sunlight in, is off the ground, so snakes don't come in, and can be sealed up at night to protect them from coyotes. (We use the premier fencing, too... but the coyotes we have out here can jump it)

 

[countrygoddess]

Wow! Thanks for all the info! I think you've really answered my questions. I've been looking at the billboard tarps, too. Hadn't priced the greenhouse plastic yet, though, so I didn't realize it was expensive. Maybe we'll do the greenhouse plastic and bales this year and after that think of something more permanent as winter quarters. Also, maybe the coyotes haven't bothered them because right now the chicken house is feet from the house. When in the meadow next door they'll be much more exposed.