Maine

[MistyMae]

Orchard Ridge Farm in Gorham is where we purchased all of our chicks this past spring. They were very nice, answered all of our questions with ease. They were so helpful. This is our first time raising chickens. They made sure we had all of our questions answered and I def felt like I could have contacted them again (through Facebook messaging) with any other concerns.

 

[MistyMae]

Newbie here getting ready for winter (even though it was 70 degrees today), it is on my mind. We are going to put clear corrugated plastic roof panels on the roof of the run, and wrap the run and coop with contractor poly. Any other suggestions/warnings/ideas? The coop is just a bit too far away from the house to run power down to it. Not sure how long you should run an extension cord. But I would like to consider that for keeping their water from freezing (and to keep us from having to haul water down twice a day). Online now looking for a wall mounted feeder for inside the coop for the winter too. So much to think about. I want my girls dry and comfy for the winter.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

I run an extension cord... let me find some pictures

There's a plug next to one of the doors. We run the extension cord up a PVC pipe to get it tall enough that we can drive/walk/plow/blow under it and it doesn't get frozen to the ground. It goes across the driveway and then into a board that we drilled a hole into (again to keep it high) then across the run and into the coop, following a series of O rings and S hooks down to the heated base. I also have a covering thing between the extension cord and the heated base plugs, it's supposed to be water resistant, but also chicken dander resistant. Some outdoor rated thing for christmas lights.

I also run out of the same pipe a cord for a duck waterer and a goat waterer.


The extension pole off one of the fence posts, hole drilled through to keep the line up




PVC pipe with only the chicken line going out it. When things get SERIOUS we also have the goat and water lines running out of it, in different directions to the respective areas. Not sure why the year I took this picture we didn't have the other water lines up yet, but it does look early in the season based upon the minimal snowfall.


Hopefully this helps. Other than keeping the windows and vents open in the chicken coop unless it's actively snowing or very badly blowing with an awful wind chill, there's not much to recommend. My birds are allowed to go out in almost any weather (unless it's significantly below -20F and blowing and/or actively blizzarding) they get the option to go out. They mostly choose to go out. I do shovel a path and especially in early winter when they're afraid of the snow I might throw a flake of hay onto it after I shovel, and some boss seeds to entice them to come out. In late winter they'll jump out into a snow pile. I keep them well fed (higher protein in the winter, most of the time for me) and I don't worry too much about the frozen turd piles because after years of chicken keeping I realized I could fret about it and try to chisel it off or I could wait until it thawed a bit and deal with it then and not injure myself over it. I do have a metal scraper that I got from home depot that helps with the frozen turds, but after a certain cold point in winter, those turds aren't coming up until they thaw. I wish someone had told me that when I first started keeping birds.

 

[Hiltonizer]

Newbie here getting ready for winter (even though it was 70 degrees today), it is on my mind. We are going to put clear corrugated plastic roof panels on the roof of the run, and wrap the run and coop with contractor poly. Any other suggestions/warnings/ideas? The coop is just a bit too far away from the house to run power down to it. Not sure how long you should run an extension cord. But I would like to consider that for keeping their water from freezing (and to keep us from having to haul water down twice a day). Online now looking for a wall mounted feeder for inside the coop for the winter too. So much to think about. I want my girls dry and comfy for the winter.

The contractor poly won't last the winter, it's not UV stable and will rip if you look at it the wrong way once it gets into the 20's or so. Greenhouse plastic can be had on eBay reasonably priced, the woven kind would be ideal for your plan.

As far as the cord, for as little draw as that would put on it just to keep a waterer thaw, you could probably go 300' with a 14 (or ideally a 12) gauge cord. Should be fine with a 100watt bulb doing that. Probably SOL beyond 150' or so with a stock tank heater. Good question if you have an electrician friend, they have tricks with aluminum wire and such for distances and know the math for voltage drop etc.

If you're setting this up like a green house though, and were to add add some thermal mass to it in the form of some black painted barrels full of water, and use rubber pans, you may have very few freezing issues.

 

[DwayneNLiz]

Newbie here getting ready for winter (even though it was 70 degrees today), it is on my mind. We are going to put clear corrugated plastic roof panels on the roof of the run, and wrap the run and coop with contractor poly. Any other suggestions/warnings/ideas? The coop is just a bit too far away from the house to run power down to it. Not sure how long you should run an extension cord. But I would like to consider that for keeping their water from freezing (and to keep us from having to haul water down twice a day). Online now looking for a wall mounted feeder for inside the coop for the winter too. So much to think about. I want my girls dry and comfy for the winter.

if you have spare PVC pipe around you can make your own wall mounted gravity fed feeder,
i would run an extension cord or get a solar heater for the water
Good luck!

 

[buckabucka]

We just use a cheap blue tarp from Marden's around the run. We do have one wall with greenhouse plastic, and that works good too.

 

[lazy gardener]

Personally, I'd not wrap the coop with plastic. IMO it needs to breathe. Put in extra bedding. Perhaps bank around coop with hay or bags of leaves if it's raised off ground. I also run ext. cord to coop. Have weather proof attachment at house, and at coop. Box mounted under eave where it is wired through the back (which is inside the coop with a 6 outlet surge protector box.) So, I can hook up heated dog bowl for water, do heat lamp if birds become hypothermic, and give them a light to boost egg laying. I don't start the light till late oct or Nov, about the same time I start the heated dog bowl. I put a gallon jug in the middle so it holds more water, and keeps them from wading through it. (when I go out to check on the birds and collect eggs, I simply pour more water from jug into the moat to keep the moat topped off.) Helps to keep wattles out of water also. You can pick up corrugated plastic tubing at any hdw. store to put around elect. cord to help prevent chickens from pecking, and mice from chewing.

 

[DwayneNLiz]

Personally, I'd not wrap the coop with plastic. IMO it needs to breathe. Put in extra bedding. Perhaps bank around coop with hay or bags of leaves if it's raised off ground. I also run ext. cord to coop. Have weather proof attachment at house, and at coop. Box mounted under eave where it is wired through the back (which is inside the coop with a 6 outlet surge protector box.) So, I can hook up heated dog bowl for water, do heat lamp if birds become hypothermic, and give them a light to boost egg laying. I don't start the light till late oct or Nov, about the same time I start the heated dog bowl. I put a gallon jug in the middle so it holds more water, and keeps them from wading through it. (when I go out to check on the birds and collect eggs, I simply pour more water from jug into the moat to keep the moat topped off.) Helps to keep wattles out of water also. You can pick up corrugated plastic tubing at any hdw. store to put around elect. cord to help prevent chickens from pecking, and mice from chewing.

if you poked a couple holes in the jug below normal water level it will become its own refiller

 

[woods79]

Lot of great winter ideas going on, this is our first winter as well so glad to be fallowing along in the tread....

well it looks like 4 of the new girls are a bit of bullies and mostly one of them the worst, she attacks the 6 she was with and the 8 we had for no real reason. Our 8 Orpingtons also do not seem to know how to stand up for them selves, a lot of the bullying seems to be centered around the food. The 7 new ones were more left to free range and fend for them selves day and night before we got them. They will stand guard at the feeder pushing my original 8 out of the coop, they even pushed them off the top roost last night and made the others sleep on the lower roost or on the floor. I resorted to day to putting a feed try outside for my 8 Orpingtons have not even been allowed inside the coop today, they have always had water in and out. This is the first real day they are together as we put the newer girls in last night around 5 pm after being in a crate all day in the run so our original 8 could get more use to them first.

 

[lazy gardener]

Woods, How big is your coop? How many birds total? You might want to do multiple feed and water stations for a while, and if they are on pellets, perhaps even scatter the feed on the ground a bit (not all of it, but a hand full here and there..)

if you poked a couple holes in the jug below normal water level it will become its own refiller

Liz, It would do that, but when they drank it down so level would be same in jug and bowl, I think the jug would be apt to tip over, causing a spill. I go to great lengths to be sure not to spill any water in my coop, especially when the weather gets below 20* in there. With my flock on FF, they don't drink as much water as they would if on dry feed. I'm checking on them before the water level ever gets very low anyways, and it's no bother to top it off. Usually, when I go out mid day, I carry an extra jug with me and just switch out the jugs. Sometimes it stays warm enough in the coop so I can even just leave the second jug to swap out later. If I get them on horizontal nipples this fall, I may use the dog bowl to keep FF in, and then I'll never have frozen FF! Will put an aquarium heater in the nipple bucket.