Hello all,
I am still new to this backyard chicken experience and we are coming into our first winter for the girls. We live in upstate New York and I am double checking my decision for my girls and NY winter. I have read both for heating their hen house and not.
I have heard people say
chickens have been around for thousands of years during times where there was no heating especially not for farm animals.
This is often repeated, but it's historically incorrect; heating has often been provided one way or another. You can't really compare the temperatures inside a tin chook coop with the temps inside a mud chook coop, though. In the first, they freeze to death, or bake to death, in the latter they remain at comfortable temperatures all year round.
When people moved to climes that were fatal to their livestock, they adapted, mostly by building appropriate shelters or using natural ones like caves for their animals. They sometimes used fire to warm themselves and their animals if necessary, but quite often the main means of heating was the animals themselves. Over time the animals adapted, developing traits necessary to survive like longer fur or heavier feathering, but they couldn't adapt overnight or even within a few generations to the extent necessary, and relied on humans providing external means to remain warm enough. Even once adapted, most are unable to survive without human help, specifically in providing shelter for the night. A chook left to perch in trees over a snowy winter will likely die, no matter how cold hardy it is.
Those long, low stone houses you find in many countries, built hundreds of years ago, have been used for cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, and more livestock, to keep them warm enough to survive winter. Sure, there's no fire, no electricity, but that many bodies packed into a well insulated, draught-free, and enclosed space significantly boosts indoor temperature. Much like Eskimos inside igloos, lol, even without a fire they can be like saunas just due to the amount of bodies in that confined space.
In many colder countries, people routinely brought their poultry etc indoors during winter, where they would benefit from the fire if the humans were using one; in many cases there was no fire but they used animals like pigs as heaters, having the living quarters right above the swine-pens if not outright sleeping amongst the animals like some people did.
For example, in Germany they would build barn-house style buildings where the indoor heating was in fact the farm animals, whose combined temperatures helped keep the humans as well as the animals alive. You'll see pics in some history textbooks of the little winter pens people used for chickens and other small livestock, for the period of being kept indoors.
Chickens naturally belong to a humid and hot region, as you know, but for thousands of years they've been transported all over the world and kept alive in very cold climates, which would be impossible without some form of artificial temperature control, which can be as simple as the mud huts many countries use for their animals. These are common and very effective, being warm in winter and cool in summer.
Then I've heard of people bringing the flock inside their home to sit by the fire, LOL! I've read that if you put lighting in their house they will produce eggs on a regular all year even during winter months, then I've also read that doing this could shorten their life span because naturally they are supposed to go through the seasons with less light and have a break from constant egg laying.
I'm a fan of doing things naturally, personally, but it's a pretty personal sort of decision, so best wishes with whatever your stance on it is.
So I have decided to let my girls go all natural. They free range in my yard, I will not put light or heat in their coop/henhouse, and we made sure they have many vents at the top of their house. Just wanted to ask your opinion if these are good decisions we've made.
Depends; what's the ambient temperature in winter where you are? They can only adapt so far; they're not designed for the countries we've transplanted them to, so forcing them to 'go natural' there will only result in natural selection occurring, removing animals that cannot survive in that region without assistance.
I don't know about the 'many vents' --- I'd be checking out how cold it gets there at night time, in person, feeling feet and combs, and if any are very cold... I'd have less vents. Ventilation is a great thing but too much is fatal.
I've only had house pets my whole life so bringing the animals inside or giving them heat in some way would be my first reaction to the cold winter months, but then I also read that my birds are hardy winter birds that will adapt well to the temperatures in NY that's why they were available here.
Really, whether or not your birds are truly winter hardy depends on a few things... Reviews and articles on any given breed guarantee little to nothing about the strain or family line of that breed that you end up with.
Ideally, all family lines of that breed should represent the breed properly; in reality, very few do. In order for that breed to be reliable, everyone breeding it has to consistently maintain everything that makes that breed what it is. This includes environmental pressures (like temperature, if it's supposed to be cold or heat hardy it's counterproductive to protect them from exposure to such pressures, or they won't adapt and lose any adaptions gained) as well as things like social conditions, (e.g. like preserving maternal ability in a breed known for it by not resorting to only artificial incubation/rearing, and preserving docility by not leaving them almost completely unhandled as a rule) as well as selecting for whatever productive traits it's supposed to have, as well as appearance, but normally the majority do not select evenly across the board... Unfortunately people tend to buy chooks thinking they're all like products out of a catalog, because those who know better often don't point out these sorts of facts to newbies. Just because it's supposed to be a certain breed does not guarantee it has any of the good points of that breed.
Long story short, it's no use believing 'breed X is extremely winter-hardy' when you obtained your family line of that breed from someone who kept them indoors with artificial heating throughout every winter for the last few generations. So, if you got yours from a hatchery that keeps its breeders indoors or well protected from cold, chances are they need acclimating at least.
Their body heat will be enough to keep them warm and their house to protect them from the harsh elements.
This depends entirely on the dimensions and quality of their housing. A small error or insufficiency can let them all freeze to death overnight if the temperature drops suddenly. It's something some people determine mathematically, you can find the formula on some poultry sites. Each chook produces a certain number of 'units' of body heat, and under ideal conditions that's enough, but it's a finicky sum which depends on the building, the other chooks, the temperatures, etc. I don't live anywhere cold enough to have had to do those sums but I've seen them done before. Interesting stuff.
And that if I were to give them some sort of heat source it could either cause a fire or if we were to lose power and they would lose their heat that they are used to and they would not be properly adapted for the cold they would experience at that time. Are these all correct statements in your eyes?
It makes sense, but there's a lot of variables which I can't account for. I don't know what sort of temperatures you're dealing with there or whether your birds are acclimated in the first place, or just coddled hatchery versions of some breed that normally is adapted. I also don't know how draught-proof and insulated your chook house is. Sounds like maybe you could do with some closable covers for the vents, so you can restrict some airflow if necessary.
I just want what's best for the girls to be comfortable and especially to survive the cold winter. Again I guess chickens have lived for many years without heat but just thought I'd ask! Thank you
They've never lived without sufficient heat to survive. 
Most people telling you livestock and pets managed for thousands of years without help just don't know how much help our ancestors gave them. I've seen cattle in the Netherlands that look almost like pigs due to how indoors-adapted they are, since they live indoors for most of the year due to the outdoors temperatures; that's an ancient method of keeping them alive there.
Ancient farmers are often portrayed as super-practical if not outright callous, but there's plenty of evidence they also coddled pets, and went to great lengths to preserve livestock which were individually often worth far more back then than they are now, simply due to the fact that the one lame sheep the modern farmer would generally cull represented survival for the ancient farmer's family for a month or two... And there have always been breed enthusiasts and master breeders whose animals were sometimes more important to them than their own families, and hence received the lion's share of quality feed, good housing, etc, though the latter example was of course usually restricted to royalty.
If you know what temperature the average chook can't handle, pretty soon you'll have an idea of whether or not yours can go 'cold turkey'. Watching them will help more than guesswork, really. Different rules apply for different breeds of course, and different strains of different breeds, and there's also a fine line to toe where you don't want them walking a razor's edge between maintaining weight and normal health, as well as producing, or just burning it all to stay warm. If you notice them looking a bit desperately hungry during the colder times, I'd assume they're doing it a bit hard.
Best wishes.
