Scared chicks

[bdowns73]

Thanks for your advice! We are new at this and keeping our fingers crossed they make it through the winter. When it gets real cold do we leave a heat lamp on all day and night?

1 they were probably still cold, 2 they are still a little young to use roosting bars and will still huddle for heat. Honestly the best thing to do is probably just take the light out and let them figure it out. You could remove it slowly by dimming it over a week or 2, slowly angle it away so it lights the main area off the coop less and less. This will also help with them learning to go inside on time.

I don't know when they choose to start using the roosts, but most of mine have started using the roosts between 20 and 15 weeks.

Basiclay same as in brooding if they huddle under the light they are cold of they stay away from the light they are 2 warm. But if they are huddling away from the light it's somewhere in between, and at thier age they should be OK being a little cold

 

[sawilliams]

I didn't know how cold really cold is for you, but overall no you should not need a coop light at all. Most chickens will tolerate the cold just fine as long as the coop is dry and vented. I'm sorry it hardly gets below the mid 20s for us in the worst of winter so I can't give you much help there. But the biggest issue with the cold is moist air will cause frost bite on thier combs faster then dry air.