How cold can the wild birds that overwinter where you are stand?
There are a few things that affect how chickens react to cold. If they are unhealthy, sick, injured, or damaged internally, they are more vulnerable to cold, heat, and about any other stress. They need a decent balanced diet too. Some people like to feed different things to “keep them warm” in winter, but a normal balanced diet will suffice. As long as you don’t feed so much of those things to unbalance their diet, they won’t do any harm. So are your chickens healthy and eating a balanced diet?
Just like the wild birds chickens keep themselves warm by trapping tiny air pockets in their feathers and down. You don’t have to keep the area where the chickens are warm, you need to allow the chickens to keep themselves warm. If they are hit with a wind strong enough to ruffle their feathers and release those tiny air pockets they lose the insulating effect of those tiny air pockets. You don’t see wild birds out much if a strong cold wind is blowing, they are sheltering in thickets or other protected places. But if the wind is calm you see them out in extremely cold weather. Are your chickens protected from a cold wind or is the coop or barn a wind tunnel that allows a strong wind to blow through?
Frostbite is the biggest danger to healthy chickens in the cold. In certain conditions frostbite is possible any time the temperature drops below freezing. Wind chill can be a factor but the biggest contributor to frostbite once the temperature drops below freezing is moisture. The more humid it is the more the risk of frostbite. Moisture can come from the chickens’ breathing, from wet poop if it is not frozen, from thawed drinking water, or maybe from some other source. Ventilation is the key to removing this moisture. People in the southern part of the US have caused frostbite in their chickens in weather barely below freezing by enclosing their chickens in coops so tight that moisture could not escape. People in Nova Scotia and upper Michigan have posted about their chickens sleeping in trees in the winter without getting frostbite or having other cold-related issues. I haven’t seen those trees but I’m sure ventilation is great and I suspect the chickens were able to get out of direct winds.
The coldest I’ve seen chickens sleeping in trees is about -10 F (-23 C) but that’s the coldest it’s been when I had chickens. Those chickens were not in the open, the trees were in a sheltered valley and were really thick. The chickens were very much protected from winds. So how air-tight is the area they are staying? Is it going to hold moisture or will the air dry out?
Any chicken can handle fairly cold weather but some are more cold-hardy than others. It’s not the thickness of the feathers. Turkens (Naked Necks) have about half the feathers as most chickens plus their neck is bare, yet they are considered a cold-hardy breed. Chickens with large combs and wattles, like single combs, are more vulnerable to frostbite than chickens with smaller combs like pea or rose combs. Plenty of people north of you have chickens with single combs that get through the winter in unheated coops without problems, but some do have problems.
People like to think we deal with magic numbers with chickens, whether that is space, age, hen to rooster ratios, temperatures, or about anything else. With one number everything is utopia but just a slight change guarantees disaster. Real life doesn’t work that way. There are so many variables involved that what works for me might not work for you. I can’t tell you how much cold your chickens can stand but it is probably more than you think.
There is nothing wrong with moving them to the barn as long as you are happy with predator protection and can feed and water them. Just because they can stand really cold weather doesn’t mean they won’t be as well off or better off in that big barn. I agree with Aart. If you are going to put them in the barn, now is as good a time as any and probably better than some. I like to do these things before conditions become extreme so I can fix a problems that shows up before it is critical.
Good luck!
