middle tennessee ?

[lesgo54]

im planning to build a coop. do yall think i need to insulate the inside walls. it does get down to 0 degrees ocassionally, but mostly in the teens here. or would having a heat lamp be good on the real cold days with out insulation

 

[conny63malies]

a bit insulation is safer than a heat lamp that could potentially set the coop on fire.

 

[Tnchickennewbie]

We are from middle TN as well and it's been so mild here this year. If you don't have a drafty coop I would think you should be ok. I'm still fairly new so others will probably know more but that's just my two cents. We have only had around 5 or 6 nights where it really dipped very far below freezing down here in southern middle TN.

 

[mb poultry]

We live in Southwest Virginia, and have been raising chickens since the 70s. Our coops have never been insulated, but they are not drafty either. The other night when it got in the single digits with wind chill i ran a 60 watt light all night. normally it turns off at 10pm on a timer. Remember no matter how cold it gets, your coop still needs ventilation!

 

[good ole boy]

i live in kentucky i have a 17x17 chicken barn that is not insulated and my chickens do fine i have been in this house for 4 years and seen the temps fall to minus 3 degrees and my flock did just fine

 

[smac]

I'm in North Alabama. I have 6 hens that just began to lay 2 weeks ago. To my surprise, they have not been affected by the cold nights at all. Their water has frozen in the coop 2 nights during the bitter cold last weekend. Check your water often or get a heated water container. I was worried about them, but they were just fine and were outside during the cold blast of air we had. Our coop does have insulation in the walls & floor (which is raised), but the ceiling is open and covered only with chicken wire under the shingled roof. I imagine the insulation we installed probably doesn't do too much for warmth. We never finished the insulated removable ceiling panels we had planned to put up there during the winter months. I wanted to keep the dust from being an issue for their respiratory systems and I felt that if I added the ceiling panels it would create a problem.
Being in the south, I was more concerned with the heat in the summer, so ventilation was very important to me. We have east & west facing windows that can be propped open with chicken wire to screen them in. I made sure that the hens I chose were hardy, there were plenty of them to huddle together to keep warm, and I could always add heat if needed. Seems to be working for me & the girls so far.

 

[debid]

The weather we get here is not severe cold. Insulate if you want but it's not required unless you're keeping something like Silkies that don't have decent feather coats.

You should be more concerned here with how they'll handle the summer heat. 100 degrees is a whole lot harder on a chicken than 20. I put the coop in the shade of deciduous trees, situated two big windows across from each other so I can add a breeze in the warmer months, and there's a solid 6" of hardware cloth running the entire length of the building on the high and low sides of a slant roof. It's staying frost and condensation-free in the winter and it's no warmer inside than it is outside during the summer. That's the goal -- you want it dry in cold weather and breezy in hot weather.