Minnesota!

[duluthralphie]

Denial of reality is an important mental health tool if you live in Minnesota.

Lots of frost, a little snow and much too cold. My "heated" waterer had iced up when I feed the chickens this morning. That thing was a waste! It's supposed to keep water thawed down to 0 and it was only 14 in the coop. I'm building my own as soon as my order from Amazon arrives tomorrow.

My waterer in the coop is working great. I bought one of those from fleetfarm for the steel waterers to set on.

However, the one I have outside is not working. I have a thick layer of ice over the water. I need to figure out how to keep water available for my outside birds and my baby CX's.

The Turkeys and guinea fowl refuse to go into a building. The CX's live in a brooder and have free access outdoors. I cannot put them with my layers or they get beat up. I have one waterer between the turkeys, guinea and CX's. I am wondering if I make a 3 sided shelter out of bales if it will be warm enough to keep water from freezing.

Other wise I may have to get a magnetic heater to use with the heated stand. Only 9 more months of winter to go!




BTW it is not fair! I am way south of you and have way too much snow!

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I built a cookie tin heater and pop in a 40 watt light bulb. I built it for around $10 or a little less. It's worked pretty great the last 3 winters. 25 watt is not enough heat and 60 the tin gets pretty hot (burnt chicken I fear) So I found 40 is my bulb for that thing. When it's -10 or -15 real temp I need to chip out the ice. I just alternate waterers every day if we're really in the deep freeze. Leaving one in the house thawed ready for the next morning and bringing the ice block back up to the house to be ready for the next day.

Rubber bowls work good for winter too. Just knock out the ice berg and refill.

I see a heat lamp in a coop just about burned down a garage (next to the coop apparently) in Duluth.

 

[jailerjoe]

I'm going to try this but using horizontal nipples instead: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/summer-winter-chicken-nipple-waterer

I've most of the stuff I need but couldn't find a submersible water pump or the horizontal nipples locally. Good thing for Amazon.com!

Oh and you can keep the snow! The longer I can avoid shoveling the nasty white stuff the better. And since it's halfway through November we really only have eight and a half months of winter left. ;-)

 

[jailerjoe]

I see a heat lamp  in a coop just about burned down a garage (next to the coop apparently) in Duluth.

Yeah that's what I'm afraid of. I don't know if I'll be able to resist the temptation of turning it on when it hits -40 though. Maybe we'll have a mild winter and I won't have to worry about it? HA!

 

[duluthralphie]

I'm going to try this but using horizontal nipples instead: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/summer-winter-chicken-nipple-waterer

I've most of the stuff I need but couldn't find a submersible water pump or the horizontal nipples locally. Good thing for Amazon.com!

Oh and you can keep the snow! The longer I can avoid shoveling the nasty white stuff the better. And since it's halfway through November we really only have eight and a half months of winter left. ;-)

That will all depend on whether we have a warmer or colder than normal 4th of July!

 

[Rani]

Did anyone else wake up to find frost on the pumpkins today?

It is going to get chilly here before long..*



*Denial of reality makes my life better.

The only thing on my pumpkins for two years has been powdery mildew.

 

[Rani]

I heard the panel heaters didn't radiate alot of heat but I've never tried one so I really can't say how good or bad they would be. Last year I used one of those oil-filled heaters. It seemed to work well but I think I'll try it without this year (I do have it handy in case I start thinking they are acting too cold).
I have a heated dog bowl in there this year and I'm real paranoid with that. I do have it up on blocks so they can't scratch straw into it or even around it and it doesn't get hot but I still worry.

The water heater makes me nervous, too. I've heard that mice will sometimes chew through extension chords, so I'm having to check on that periodically.

We had a head scratcher. The humidity in the coop was up around 76%. I had the roof open as far as I thought reasonable without having cold air blowing down on the hens at night. Still - mid 70's for humidity. I opened the side door to air it out and the humidity went up. Hmmmmm

So today I checked the local weather and the outdoor humidity this morning was 81%! Duh. I had no idea it could be that humid when it's in the single digits. The lake we are on is not yet frozen and I wonder if that is adding to the humidity. I think maybe frostbite is inevitable in Minnesota until the lakes freeze and the humidity goes down. It's not my hens producing all that moisture - it's the outside air. No way to combat that.

 

[Rani]

Yeah Jonus the Ahmish guy does really good work. Way better than me!

My plan is to move my existing flock to half of the shed this spring. I'm ordering more chicks for delivery in March and once they're big enough to hold their own they'll move in to the new shed as well. My wife has wanted goats for some time now and we might use the other half of the shed for them.

I'm thinking about trying my hand at meat chickens and using my existing coop for that. I'm not sure about that.

Here's a photo I took of my existing coop this cold, cold morning. Not much to look at (unless Tyvek is your thing

) but it seems to be doing it's job.



The whole thing was kind of a spur of the moment deal. I'd been wanting chickens for a few years and this spring I was finally able to talk my wife into letting me get some and build a coop (that was the order I did it as well). When it was time to move the new chickens from their brooder in the garage to an outdoor coop I wasn't prepared at all! A weeks worth of scrounging for building material (part of the deal with my wife was that I had to scrounge for a significant amount of the lumber) and scrambling to get it built, and we were up and running. I worked on it on and off over the summer but never got around to putting on the siding. Now that we have a new building, I'm glad I didn't.

Looks comfy cozy.

 

[lalaland]

I was actually kind of speechless when she suggested it and then recovered enough to put up token resistance so I could remind her latter that it was her idea. LOL.

I'm deep litter here and made my roosts out of 2 x 4's. Not sure the poop will be frozen or not since I've heard that with DL composting continues in the winter and will put off a little heat. I'm skeptical.

yeah, I think you are right to be skeptical of deep litter composting in minnesota in the winter. Even my garden compost piles are not large enough to compost during the winter, but once I had a load of woodchips and that was large enough to compost all winter long. You could dig in the pile and it would be warm to the touch even in January.

I've never ever had deep litter compost during the winter. If, and that is a big if, I had compost going in the deep litter in the summer, maybe, it would keep going in the winter. But, in the summer, it is too dry to compost. I know some people actually spray water in their coop to add the moisture to make it compost in the summer. It also works better if you have an earth floor. Some add dirt to their interior floor. But in the summer I am too busy to mess with trying to create a compost bin inside the coop.

So not only do I not have composting deep litter in the summer, I also clean it out in the fall - mostly to remove all the build up of dust. It is replaced by fresh hay. When it starts to freeze, the droppings freeze. frozen doesn't compost. I usually just throw clean hay on top of it, I try to remove the giant glops of piled up poopsicles as they prevent the hens from overturning the litter.

It is probably possible to keep it composting in the winter if you already have a good deep litter that was already composting, and if your coop floor is on the ground with no airspace underneath. But that has never been my situation - never had composting litter in the summer because it is too dry and my coop floor is 3 feet off the ground. My coop is an old construction trailer.

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I saw a composting coop litter homesteading video on YouTube one time. Looked like they had snow and cold where they were at and they actually added heating plates of some sort to the coop litter layers.

Nah.

I think you're right LaLa. If you use pine shavings those take forever to break down under under ideal conditions in the summer. Winter here just does not allow for it that I can figure unless you put those heat elements or kennel Warmers whatever they are.