Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I think I'm really going to like it here. I'll have to post some pics of our coop and everything when I can. I just built it brand new last season, and I'm still working on it. Thankfully, I finished it enough before the bitter cold hit here so the flock could be moved in from the couple different coops that they were in before that. It's not perfect, but I designed and built it myself, and I'm pretty happy with it. This season I just have to replace some temporary panels with doors to facilitate easy cleaning, trim it out, then paint it. I could probably finish it during a long weekend, maybe two. Progress on things is slow sometimes since I work full time and spend around 10 hours a week driving to and from work. I'm still learning a lot, and still making mistakes, but I'm trying. I didn't use heat in my coop this past winter because there are so many mixed opinions and I didn't know quite what to do. Then a few of my birds got frostbite on their combs. I feel terrible, so I will be adding some of our brooder/coop heaters in next year. I'll also be running power to the coop during the summer.
That's one thing about the "heating a coop" discussion on Facebook vs here. There, you get the "your chickens are wearing down coats and they'll be fine," or "chickens lived just fine hundreds of years ago without heat," people.
But while some here, too, may not believe in heating a coop, there is a level of respect here for those who do, so we're not razzed or lectured about it.
We heat our coops to 40F so water and eggs won't freeze, and so homie here doesn't have to trudge out to the coop twice a day in frigid temps through two feet of snow to try bring my fluffies some water.
In one coop it's a thin oil-filled radiator heater by NewAir (non-digital). In the other, it's an electric one with a blower that's installed onto a wall. It is also non-digital, so it will come right back on if the power goes out and back on again. Digital ones usually won't come back on themselves; someone has to turn them back on. Our coops are insulated, so if the power does go out, the coop temp will fall from 40F to whatever slowly, giving chickens time to acclimate. They free range at 20F provided it's not windy out, so they don't need to acclimate to much, if anything.
Frostbite comes from moisture in the air + below freezing temps. If coop has low humidity, they most likely won't get frostbite. Ours never have, but these are silkies who aren't known to as much due to walnut comb and feathered feet. We use a 5-gallon nipple bucket for water, so there is no open water in the coop. Horse bedding pellets on the floor dry up the poops. You might want to look at increasing your ventilation a bit, but here we couldn't, so put in a digital exhaust fan and a vent in our human door between that coop and the garden shed.
Get your humidity down in your coop and you'll run less risk of frostbite guaranteed.
In the outside pens, they each have a hutch that we put a Cozy Coop radiant heat panel in.
