Question About Temperature Extremes

[Yoda]

I know someone here in CT who free ranges and her birds are out all day in the extreme weather and has not lost any to the cold yet (knock on wood) they can tolerate quite a bit once they get use to it. Young ones will need the heat in the winter just in case. If anyone has young birds like around 6-8 months I would include a heat lamp. If the power goes out bring the young ones inside to keep warm. All my birds go into the shed at night in the winter, none choose to stay outside, don't know why but they all go in. In winter all my birds are together in the pen, none are seperated so when they are locked up their body heat heats the shed. I get frost on the inside walls in the morning but it is still warm inside the shed.

 

[Arbor]

They can tolerate the temps you mentioned. The key is out of the wind. I've got birds that go outside only to eat and roost at night - even with roosting available indoors. Never had any problems with peas and frostbite, and we get lower temps than you mentioned.

 

[Yoda]

Arbor, Not to change the subject but what months are your breeding season? Just curious

 

[Dany12]

Something interesting !

http://www.hopkinslivestock.com/building_a_heated_roost.htm

 

[Haunted55]

I can understand wanting opinions... we all want the best for our birds and the best way to learn is to ask others. If they have had frostbite previously, it's really important that they be able to cover their toes while roosting. They possibly had a smaller roost before that left their toes exposed. If they were greens or high percentage spaulding, you would know it. They wouldn't look like blues.

Here in North Dakota, it's pretty flat. Mostly open agricultural fields with lines of trees planted as shelter belts in some areas. 50 MPH winds are not uncommon, and bitter cold temps are expected though the -20's are more common than the -30's. Wind chill can easily get in the -60 range. We have wild turkeys and pheasant, the biggest weather threat to them is if we get a lot of snow in a winter. Then their feed source is covered and they starve.

One thing that you can do to prep for cold weather coming is give them a bit of black oil sunflower seed. The extra fat can help them out.

Worse than that Frosty, they were left to free range during a Maine winter with no shelter. We don't normally get the winds like you do and I do live in the woods so a lot of it is mitigated but not all. We're in for a heck of a ride with these temps and wind chills for the foreseeable future it seems. The turkeys are more than fine, they are just sharing the building for the winter as I do not have enough housing yet. I give them the BOSS and scratch everyday as well as provide warm water for drinking. Now maybe a dumb question but can they have suet? I know that the turkeys will eat it if they can get it. I have no clue as to whether peafowl would. They do eat bugs and such so maybe they would. I wish I could find a book that had all this info in it.

 

[Haunted55]

Something interesting !

http://www.hopkinslivestock.com/building_a_heated_roost.htm

I saw this and another one that used Christmas lights which is how I decided to go. I used a 2" PVC pipe and stuffed them in and called it good. Now in hindsight, I realized, there are places that aren't heated as well as others. So this coming week I will be taking the length of the pipe and cutting a wedge out of the bottom, mounting the Christmas lights to a board, adding a thermostat set at 90 degrees to the light cord and then putting the pipe over the wiring and lights. Zip tie it together and mount it. More even heating being able to stationary mount the lights and 90 degrees is well below kindling temperature for wood or pvc. At least their feet will be warm.

 

[Arbor]

Arbor, Not to change the subject but what months are your breeding season? Just curious

I've had eggs as early as end of April (last season I decided to try an experiment to get the girls to lay earlier by putting my lights on a timer and increasing the light levels earlier than natural, however, the males did not respond the same, and ended up with a few weeks of infertile eggs). Generally we get eggs around end of May, but most depends on the winter. Last year we only had 4 days below 32 (0 celsius). THis was as extreme as I have ever seen in my entire 33 years. So far this year alone (2013) we're almost past that number

 

[Arbor]

Haunted55 - peafowl shouldn't have any problem with the suet, as they do eat pretty much anything put in front of them if they are hungry enough. I've heard of people supplementing during breeding season with ground beef to increase the protein level, without any ill effect to the birds themselves.

 

[Haunted55]

Haunted55 - peafowl shouldn't have any problem with the suet, as they do eat pretty much anything put in front of them if they are hungry enough. I've heard of people supplementing during breeding season with ground beef to increase the protein level, without any ill effect to the birds themselves.

Good to know. I make my own blocks for the wild birds and am going to be making my chickens and ducks some as well. Wouldn't be a stretch then to make some up for the peas. Now somewhere on BYC, someone said their peas loved bananas, another said p'nuts. Hmmm, I wonder if that would be a good mix to try as well as BOSS added into the mix. At least give them somthing to do.

 

[Frosty]

I know someone here in CT who free ranges and her birds are out all day in the extreme weather and has not lost any to the cold yet (knock on wood) they can tolerate quite a bit once they get use to it. Young ones will need the heat in the winter just in case. If anyone has young birds like around 6-8 months I would include a heat lamp. If the power goes out bring the young ones inside to keep warm. All my birds go into the shed at night in the winter, none choose to stay outside, don't know why but they all go in. In winter all my birds are together in the pen, none are seperated so when they are locked up their body heat heats the shed. I get frost on the inside walls in the morning but it is still warm inside the shed.

Yoda, peafowl that are 6-8 months old don't need a heat lamp. I don't use them for anything but chicks starting out, and even then I had one shatter when (I assume) a drop of condensation hit it and there were glass pieces everywhere. Up here any peachicks hatched will be around 3-4 months old when it gets cold since it will be June at the earliest before they even start laying and we get snow as early as early October. In the winter, if I bring them in for any reason I most likely won't be able to put them back out until spring since I don't want to take them from house temps back out to 10 degrees or colder. I do have one staying in the house for the winter, but she hatched on 9/14. 1 month old is too young to leave out in the cold...