quick and dirty attempt to deal with sub zero temps

[dftkarin]

A local chicken owner told me to go get $10 of this from the hardware store so on the coldest afternoon, with frozen fingers and my staple gun, I put up this stuff.

 

[Puff of Fluff]

Nice setup and it looks to me like it might help. How many birds will there be to help radiate body heat around them?

 

[Mrs MIA]

I insulated the ceiling with that stuff on one of our coops...

Cheap, makes it easy to drop a ceiling for trapping the heat closer to the birds. However, they DO like to peck at it, so just keep an eye out.

 

[dftkarin]

I have 4 hens (1 glw, 2br and an australorp) and I'm not sure it made any difference because there is still a lot of air above their hunkered-down backs, its not a sealed little area so the warmth can too easily escape I think, and still when I open the coop in the morning I don't feel any warmth. The gallon waterer is always frozen solid (even with my handmade insulated thermal cover) and the poop is always frozen - but my sweet girls have all seemed okay - no frostbite or trouble.

 

[scooter147]

Chickens are quite the survivors in the winter. The most trouble I have is frost bite on the roosters combs and wattles and it seems the more vasiline I put on them the worse it gets. I have said several times on this site I can't remember in my 40+ years raising chickens of losing one to cold, heat totally different story, lose at least one in the heat of the summer.
Growing up we had chickens runneth over syndrome. (not to mention turkeys, ducks, geese and guienas) I don't think mom or day knew how many we had at any one time, we ordered meat chickens and hen chicks each year from the hatchery but at any time during the spring, summer and fall we had three or four hens running around with chicks they hatched from hiding their nest on the farm. So if I had to guess between 125-150 at any one time. There were six of us kids and we ate a lot of eggs and poultry and did not have a short supply of either.
We had numerous chickens that would roost in the trees at night in the worst of weather, below freezing temp, snow, sleet, you name it and seem to survive just fine.

 

[lilchick]

One of my windows in red barn dropped down and cracked but stayed in frame... I had to leave it open and on the coldest nights I used a feed bag and stapled it over window on the inside!
Gotta do what ya can to keep the drafts off them