Preparing Your Flock & Coop for WINTER

[Brookfield Cyn]

I think your breed matters a lot. I live outside of Chicago. Think of the wild birds: our robins fly south but our sparrows & cardinals do not. They made it through our polar vortex winters of late with no human help. A solid coop with food and unfrozen water should be fine if you chose cold hardy breeds.

 

[micstrachan]

This makes me cry.

 

[Karen1958]

I live in PNW also. We live at 1000 ft out by the mountain on top of a ridge so we get whipping winds & cold during the fall & winter. Our coop was built inside a shed, it's small. We put a permanent metal shed roof on to keep my 8x8 yard dry for our 4 ladies. I just put a tarp on the east side of the fencing & on the west side to keep it as dry as possible. I use straw on the coop & in the yard to keep it from getting mucky. They seem to be doing well so far but wont hesitate to add a tarp on the south wall if needed. The door on the yard gives it great ventilation in & out because I do not have a door on their exit from coop to yard so they can get food & water when the want.

 

[Beekissed]

Winter tweaking is nearly complete, though I still need to jack up the coop and insert some old treated 4x4s I found on the land, to give me a more level coop and more head room at the front. It seems like that is where all the finished chicken compost gets shoved....for some reason chickens will always try to level the ground on which they live if it's in a coop or run. When it gets deep there, I hit my head on the center brace of the hoop coop, so elevating that end will finally level out the top of my coop and give me more room up top and for deeper litter.


Changed out the tarp from summer to winter tarp, replaced the plastic roof liner/cap underneath first...the old one had finally bit the dust after 4 yrs of use, washed down some surfaces, cleaned out nest boxes, dusted them and the roosts, refreshed the nest bedding, added a couple loads of leaves in the coop and spare pen, and only have a few more little tweaks left to do before winter.






Stripped down to the bare bones....you can see in this pic how low that front end is, as the coop sits on a slight slope.



Nice tight fit with this new tarp, except it's a tad too wide, so I have to do some type of adaptation for that on the long side...don't want to cut this nice tarp to make it fit, so will think of something else to use so I can fasten it down tightly when the real cold sets in, but also take that side loose when I want to let in air on any warm days we get.






I'm thinking about hinging the top of my single nest box and using it to hold my heated water bowl this winter like I did last year....the bowl fits perfectly down into that nest and the top keeps the dust out, while the height of the nest from the floor keeps the DL from being kicked into the water. I want to hinge the top so I can lift it a little to enable them to tilt back their heads better when they take a drink...right now that top is slanted and screwed into place.

Do the tweaks ever truly end?

 

[TalkALittle]

Lookin' good @Beekissed!

A week and a half ago when we had some 80 degree weather I took the hose to the run and sprayed clean all the surfaces. As we had a record dry year, the water was good for the litter too. I took a broom to the walls and rafters inside the coop.

I also took a few minutes to install the clear tarps on the walls of the coop. They are now rolled up and secured like window shades along the eaves of the run but are ready to be dropped down and secured with bungees when the need arises. The ease of installation makes their purchase worth every penny.

I cleared some leaves from the yard and used them to fill the run. I ran over a few flakes of straw with the mower and tossed that in there too. Bagged up some more leaves for later use.

Upon visual inspection, there's some warped trim on the coop that needs replacing but other than that, no structural stuff needs doing.

Next, I've got to dig out my stock tank heater from wherever I put it. Finding it will probably take the longest of all the winter prep tasks!

 

[Beekissed]

Lookin' good @Beekissed !

A week and a half ago when we had some 80 degree weather I took the hose to the run and sprayed clean all the surfaces. As we had a record dry year, the water was good for the litter too. I took a broom to the walls and rafters inside the coop.

I also took a few minutes to install the clear tarps on the walls of the coop. They are now rolled up and secured like window shades along the eaves of the run but are ready to be dropped down and secured with bungees when the need arises. The ease of installation makes their purchase worth every penny.

I cleared some leaves from the yard and used them to fill the run. I ran over a few flakes of straw with the mower and tossed that in there too. Bagged up some more leaves for later use.

Upon visual inspection, there's some warped trim on the coop that needs replacing but other than that, no structural stuff needs doing.

Next, I've got to dig out my stock tank heater from wherever I put it. Finding it will probably take the longest of all the winter prep tasks!

I know what you mean!!! My heated watering vessels are buried under a stack of other things....going to be a chore just to get to them.

Don't you just love those little seasonal tweaks that tuck in your animals for that season? When it all looks good and feels good, you know it's good! I too love the clear tarps and wonder why I didn't stumble onto those years ago....would have made all kinds of things better in various places I've lived and different hoop structures I've built. This new one has just the right amount of grommets, whereas the last one I bought didn't, so I had to add grommets to get the kind of fit I had wanted on the coop.

 

[Blooie]

We skipped using the grommets almost completely on ours, Miss Bee. The doggone things are never exactly where you need them the most, and I'm too lazy and un-talented to put new ones where I want them. So we just use the grommets on one side - the anchor side on the west - and then use heavy spring clamps on the rest. Having it anchored on one side allows us to pull the other sides snugly into position, then we just give them a roll or two to fit and clamp them to the cattle panels. Man, that worked slick last winter. On nice days we could just unclip, roll the tarp as much as we wanted to allow more air exchange in and out, then re-clip to the new position. One wintry day our winds were gusting to 72 mph and they held totally and beautifully. I really like the flexibility this gives us to take advantage of more balmy days and protect when it's really nasty. The adjusting doesn't take but a few minutes, so we aren't out there freezing our hineys off fiddling with it, either.

I'd love to do the "wings" like you have, but I know there is no way I can do it here. Our situation is totally unique, and our needs are special for our area, and geared especially to my little feathered friends who are totally different than anyone else's feathered friends and .....and.....

 

[Beekissed]

We skipped using the grommets almost completely on ours, Miss Bee. The doggone things are never exactly where you need them the most, and I'm too lazy and un-talented to put new ones where I want them. So we just use the grommets on one side - the anchor side on the west - and then use heavy spring clamps on the rest. Having it anchored on one side allows us to pull the other sides snugly into position, then we just give them a roll or two to fit and clamp them to the cattle panels. Man, that worked slick last winter. On nice days we could just unclip, roll the tarp as much as we wanted to allow more air exchange in and out, then re-clip to the new position. One wintry day our winds were gusting to 72 mph and they held totally and beautifully. I really like the flexibility this gives us to take advantage of more balmy days and protect when it's really nasty. The adjusting doesn't take but a few minutes, so we aren't out there freezing our hineys off fiddling with it, either.

I'd love to do the "wings" like you have, but I know there is no way I can do it here. Our situation is totally unique, and our needs are special for our area, and geared especially to my little feathered friends who are totally different than anyone else's feathered friends and .....and.....

My "wings" get folded during the winter but even when they are out, the high winds on this ridge never catches under them....they are incredibly stable in that manner. This hoop structure seems to let the winds glide up and over quite well.

It has a lot to do with positioning too, as you've pointed out....my coop is at the bottom of a small hill, which protects it from wind in that direction, while being faced so that the winds we get the most, from west to east, slide right on over the hoop. We get incredibly high winds here that rip up trees by the roots and fell HUGE green trees right next to the coop, but the low profile and aerodynamics of the hoop structure seems to keep that tarp safe. It never even ripples the tarps in the high winds, while the trailer roof used to ripple all the time until we got a new roof installed over it.

My long side will not be fastened down this year either, but will be fastened with spring clips much like you describe...this will make it easy for lifting a corner or the whole thing for warm days....and the way this winter is shaping up, I think we are going to have more of those than we would want.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

I thought I'd share our winterization plan for our coop. We decided to put something up to prevent the snow from getting into the enclosure and only covered two sides, leaving the other two open to air. I wanted to staple up plastic sheeting, but my husband had a more expensive idea--about $200 all in. We put clear plastic panels up in a way that we can remove them easily and without tools and store them for summer. We live in southwest Michigan and get a lot of snow starting around...um. Now. It's totally time. So here's what we did, I hope it's useful.

Before: The coop regularly gets snow in it, and I have to shovel every day, or my girls won't go out and get their food.





These polycarbonate panels were about $30 each at Lowe's for a 12' x 26" wide (they also come in 8' lengths for about $20 each). They are really great material-heavy but not brittle, and easy to cut with tin snips.



We cut them to size and leaned them against the interior of the enclosure, and fashioned simple fasteners out of pine trim. Drill hole in the end,


Then use the table saw to cut a notch in the end that goes through the hole you just drilled.



Attach a screw eye (we used open ended ones) to the coop frame.




Slide the trim piece onto the screw eye and put a bolt through, and Bob's your uncle.



My husband hanging the panels



The finished product. This took us a total of about 3 hours to construct.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

That's a great idea, I hadn't thought of using those panels for that. Good idea.