Thanks, I think the chickens don’t need heat thing is very stupid. Every animal has a natural limit for cold tolerance and chickens come in all shapes and sizes. Some are better at dealing with it than others. The question really shouldn’t ever be do chicken needs heat but rather when. I was looking at the cozy coop heaters but am just not sure which would be the better option. I like that the cozy coop ones put out heat into the air but at the same time my coop is 8’x8, and I’m not sure if it’s better to provide sweeter heaters the length of the roost bars or several cozy coops on the wall. It also doesn’t help that the sweeter heaters are super expensive!Good for you! This is why I'm annoyed with the "Your chickens wear down coats and they'll be fine," people. Famous last words to those who asked and wound up losing chickens during the polar vortex.
We use Cozy Coop radiant heaters, a very small version of a sweeter heater, and those we usually affix to the wall. If we wanted to have them hung, there isn't really a place that we could put one where they couldn't jump to get on it, even though these are silkies and can't jump very well. I wouldn't mind them jumping on it, just I don't want another perching place to have to clean!
Neither Cozy Coops nor Sweeter Heaters get hot enough to burn a chicken though so you could try it.
May I ask how they struggled?
Sure, we had a persistent 4 days of -15 weather. My roosters all got frostbite and some of my short comb hens even did. Their toes were thankfully ok since I give them wide roosting bars. In the mornings they were completely lethargic and didn’t eat or drink much until later in the day. They all clustered in any beams of direct sunlight and were shaking pretty bad. These chickens are Plymouth rocks which are pretty winter hardy but they are bantams and I just think their small body mass doesn’t lend itself well to cold. I had a dry and draft free coop with deep bedding. At the end of the day they survived just fine but I want them to thrive
That is rough. I would be putting heaters in as well, especially since they are bantams with single combs. But the fact that even the short-combed hens got frostbite makes me think there is not enough ventilation in your coop. The moist air that comes from their breath and their poop needs to be able to escape or else it stays on their combs and feet and causes frostbite even in higher temps than that. How much winter ventilation (in square feet) do you have for how many birds?
My thought too....and the pic(that didn't quote) in their post kind of shows that.
The coop that is pictured is a new coop I built this year and not the coop they had last year when they got frostbite. Last year there were 15 birds in a 4x6 large over ezcoop. I found the coop didn’t have enough ventilation so I had drilled extra vents up on the rafters. I had a temp and humidity probe in there and it never got much higher than 60% but most days it stayed at 35%. The coop was poorly built and had a 1/2cm gap at the junction of the wall and the lid of the egg box that could contributed to drafts. My new coop has 20 bantam birds in an 8x8 insulated structure with tons of optional ports for ventilation that I can add and close as the season changes
The coop pictured isn’t the one they had last year when they got frostbite, I built this one, you can see all the vents on the back and up on the sides, and there are windows in the front that can be open. I leave them all open in the summer but right now just the top vents are open for winter. The back ports I close at night so there’s no draft
