Should I insulate or not?

[vehve]

That's the best way to do things, ask people about their opinions and experiences, and then form an informed decision by yourself. Only bad thing is that you've got no one else to blame if you decide to go with something you regret later on

 

[SMonroe1990]

Yeah I know. I'm still sticking to insulating though. Everything that google pulls up for me at least mentions it, so it's not that crazy of an idea and someone out there must think that it does kind of matter in extremely cold and unpredictable winters if there are people who do it. I think it will just work out better for me and my girls if in the end I do insulate. I kind of live in the mountains so I think last year the worst storm we got we ended up with a couple feet of snow and then when I went fifteen minutes down the road into the nearest town they had about half of what we did. I think I'm just going to go with a thinner type of insulation. I understand chickens can adapt to any sort of weather if given the chance, but it seems like my winters just keep getting colder and colder. I would rather protect them the best I can know before we have a horrid winter and then they freeze to death or something. It seems like you can never tell what the weather and seasons are going to bring anymore.

 

[SMonroe1990]

So now my next question I guess is do I insulate the roof too? The only reason I ask is because if I do and put boards up to cover the insulation I need to cut more ventilation holes somewhere. The boards I would put up would cover the the small open spaces I was leaving as ventilation.

 

[vehve]

If you insulate, roof is the most important part, use the most insulation there. Read up on some manuals on insulating houses, same principals apply, except for when it comes to ventilation. You need loads more. Also be sure to use rodent netting on any breathing vents for the insulation.

 

[JackE]

Again, I would ask, what good will insulation do, if your coop is open(Properly ventilated)during the winter? Like I said, it's not like your house, all closed up, you are not trapping heat inside. So insulation for a coop in winter is useless. The chickens are already perfectly insulated units, by themselves, for the cold weather. Your weather is nothing a chicken hasn't faced before, they are equipped to handle it. Give them a dry coop, where they don't have wind blowing through them, and they will be perfectly fine. You say yourself, that if you put in insulation, you will be blocking off the coop's ventilation flow. So you would have to reconfigure the coop to get that fresh air flow back. Why would you do that, basically for nothing? Really, the main thing you want to be concerned with in the winter, is making sure your coop has proper fresh air exchange for the number of birds you have in there.
Check out this link, this lady lives up in your area. She keeps her birds in an open-air, uninsulated, unheated coop.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/499098/woods-on-wheels-update-added-more-photos

 

[Blooie]

I don't know if it helps or not, but I was stubbornly sticking my guns about insulating my coop as well. I live in Northern Wyoming in the Big Horn Basin, a basin formed by three surrounding mountain ranges. It gets flat out cold here - some mornings I have to chip the neighbor's dog off my tire before I can go to the store.

JackE and I had a lively discussion about this, and I'm afraid I even got a bit rude about it. Well, as it turns out he made a lot of sense. My coop is not insulated. As he said, if my coop was heated the way a house is, then insulation makes sense to keep the heat in. But it isn't a heated structure. So when the moisture of the chicken's breath plus the moisture from their droppings and waterers is contained within insulated walls it's going to build up. A moist, cold environment is much harder on the chickens than a drier cold one. I have tons of ventilation in my coop to allow that buildup of moisture and ammonia escape and I can shut down the ventilation on the side where the winter winds whip the snow to cut direct drafts on my chickens. Watch wild birds outside during winter. They fluff themselves to trap the layer of body heat. Our chickens, for all of their quirks and differences, are still birds. I chose birds based on their winter hardiness in the first place, so it seems kinda silly not to let them do what they can do naturally. You can also add things to their diets in winter to help them produce heat for themselves...black oil sunflower seeds, etc.

Now, that said, there are as many opinions out here as there are chicken owners! If there was only one right way to do everything, then this entire web site could be read in half an hour. So keep doing exactly what you are doing....research, ask questions, and then make your final decision based on what you think is best for your situation. Then, when someone else asks the same questions later on, you can share what you did and how it worked or didn't work for you. Good luck, and share some pictures of your coop when it's all done! I don't know about everyone else, but I like to look at other designs and how they are implemented.

 

[SMonroe1990]

I guess I will have to give myself some more time to think. Can't take too long though the girls are growing faster than I thought they would.