Sponsored Post Let There Be Light: Ensuring Egg Laying During the Darkest Days of Winter.

[Kernel Cluck]

Great article. We are new to chickens. Our girls just started laying at the start of fall. We have 5 hens (Wyandottes, RIR and Rocks) and we will be interested to see how the girls lay over the winter.

 

[bruceha2000]

should i have the light coming on in the morning ? help please

My understanding is "Yes". You want them to have a natural bed time based on the light that day but can wake them up early with a light. Apparently doesn't need to be very bright either.

Bruce

 

[Yukonchick]

Help, my eggs are freezing and cracking in the hen house. Not insulated. how can i keep the nest box warmer. maybe somekind of insulation under the hay??

 

[marlo1968]

Is it a better idea to give the girls a break over winter? We could live without the egg production for a few months if it was better for our chickens.

I'm not sure what the more experience chicken keepers say on the matter, but I figure natures way is the better way. It is natural for a chicken to slow in egg production in the winter, so I am not adding light to my hen house this winter.

 

[bruceha2000]

Help, my eggs are freezing and cracking in the hen house. Not insulated. how can i keep the nest box warmer. maybe some kind of insulation under the hay??

I'm only just now hitting winter #1 with chickens so I can't give any "been there, done that" info. Best I can offer is I made my nest box a community, like yours but it is external (coop is inside a barn) and the tall wall of the nest is the 1/2" plywood wall of the stall now coop. There is a single hole in the middle whereas yours is totally open. The bottom and other 3 sides are 1" foam board sandwiched between plywood and the top is covered with 3 pieces of "foil on both sides" bubble wrap insulation (not yet installed in this picture) over 1/4" plywood. I didn't insulate the front wall because 1) Ran out of 1/2" plywood and 2) Not sure how much fun I could stand trying to protect the foam at the entrance hole.

BEWARE! Those stupid birds love to peck foam board. You can see the top edge of the blue/green board in the first picture. If the top is open, they will peck it. The insulation under the floor is foil both sides foam I put in last Monday. The ripped the foil and pecked a bunch of the underlying foam before I got the plywood under it yesterday.






Check with other Canadian and Alaska people here. They must have some method and I know from the "to heat or not to heat your coop" threads, many do NOT heat. I don't plan to heat but the possibility of the eggs freezing is a concern I have. Even thought about putting some sort of heat between the floor and insulation of the nest box (some fire fear here) but I am afraid they might decide to all live in the nest box if it is noticeably warm.

You have some BEAUTIFUL birds there!

Bruce

 

[Yukonchick]

Ya, i don't want to put any kind of heat other than the brooding lamp. I already keep the water from freezing with a 50 watt light bulb underneath. Can't afford to heat the chicken house, not with the price of energy these days.

 

[cthockeymom]

Maybe something to insulate the bottom of the boxes would help. I was thinking about adding some indoor/outdoor carpet cut to fit during the coldest days of the winter.

 

[DenmanSue]

Thanks so much for this. We don't have any chickens yet but we're working on getting it all together over the winter to get some chickens in the spring.

 

[Yukonchick]

Hey Bruce, I'm using a regular 100 watt treble light to keep their drinking water from freezing. i bet if you device some kind way of puting a couple 40 watt treble lights under the nests somehow that would work. I've been trying to think of a way to do that myself. i collected my eggs early this morning so they were ok except for the 2 that were laid on the floor. They were frozen and had a crack in them. Still good though. I just thaw them out and they look fine when i crack them into my frying pan. A 40 watt was working for the water for awhile but it got alot colder up here since then. and I didn't have a 60 watt laying around so had to use a 100 watt. thats life in they yukon.

 

[StarLover21]

IMHO I think it is better for the birds, to give them a break in the winter months. It is how nature designed them, and it lets them put their energy into surviving the cold months.I had rather let production fall off in the winter, and have hens lay into old age, instead of burning them out in a few years.

There are also breeds of chickens, that are wonderful winter layers

. Some of my older heritage breed hens, just came out of molt and are giving me 3 or 4 eggs a week. That might not seem like much, but it is not bad for a old hen.