SubArcticFowl's Winter Coop

SubArcticFowl

Songster
Sep 14, 2019
83
293
146
NWT, Canada
I finally got around to finishing my winter coop last weekend and moved my four chickens. The winter coop is under my deck and has two warm walls (house crawl space and biomass boiler room) and half a warm roof. The other walls are 2x6 construction with fibreglass insulation and vapour barrier (~R20 nominal). There is about 9 square feet of overhead ventilation. It has two PVC feeders, one heated water dish, one nest box, and a 2x4 roost bar. I've got an old toilet in there that I will fill up this weekend with sand and a little ash for dust baths. I've got one xylophone hanging and I plan to put in more toys and clutter over time. There is one light on a timer 13 hours a day and some LED Christmas lights on 24/7. Some natural light works its way through the vent and windows, but not much this time of year.

indoor coop.jpg


The first night I moved them it was -28C outside and about -3C inside their new home. It is only going to get colder from here. We typically get about 10 to 14 days a year of colder than -40 C, with windchills as bad as -58C. I don't think I will end needing to put additional heat in here. When I move the birds back outside in the spring I want them to be tough enough to handle the cold nights.

The floor is concrete with some exposed bedrock. I've covered it with about 3-4" of wood pellets. I will add more over time. I go down there about twice a day, scope up the obvious large turds and stir up the rest. After about 3 days it had this weird sweet-like smell when I bent over to scope, but not at head level. That smell had me concerned, but it seems to have disappeared now. I'm thinking it had something to do with the pellets reacting to the poop, but I'm not sure. The smell was only present went I bent over. Outside the door, through the vents, and inside at head level has no smell. The chickens are happy, healthy, and laying regularly.

I welcome any questions or feedback and will post some actual photos soon.
 
That’s a great use of otherwise wasted space under the deck and cutting heat loss by 50 % using the two existing walls of your house. The pellets are very high in carbon compared to straw or leaves and will absorb a lot of ammonia from the manure. That should keep it smelling pretty good all winter long. I stir my litter up every couple of days and any smell from under the roost seems to just disappear. You did not mention how big the coop is but with only 4 birds you should do fine. Edit. Actually if I had blown that nice blueprint up I would have seen 16 x8 feet. That’s huge you could probably keep twice that many hens. I have 3 hens in my 8 x8 foot coop. They are happy even without going outside. There is no direct sunlight right now and even though I have a fenced run they have no interest in going outside in the snow. They do like eating snow though so I give them a snowball every day to eat!
 
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Nice! I will be following your journey through the winter if you keep posting:)
We get a few nights in the -30’s ranges here too. Last year I heated my coop just to above freezing so I could have more time to collect eggs and prevent from fully freezing. This winter I’m going to try a different method, one I think I haven’t seen done before so I think it’s made up. I have a raised nesting boxes and underneath it I wrapped landscape fabric. Inside will have a small radiator heater (700w) max output- standard outlet could handle approximately 1800w from my understanding. Radiator heaters also draw the least amount of power of any plug-in heaters that I researched, let me know if I’m wrong. I cut out openings underneath nesting area to allow heat to come through... hopefully this keeps eggs warmer. I also added curtains to each nesting box to keep heat in for a longer period of time. I will finish putting in bedding in each one and installing the heater this weekend Sat. 11/27/21. I’m hoping this works or I’ll think of something else
 

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Nice! I will be following your journey through the winter if you keep posting:)
We get a few nights in the -30’s ranges here too. Last year I heated my coop just to above freezing so I could have more time to collect eggs and prevent from fully freezing. This winter I’m going to try a different method, one I think I haven’t seen done before so I think it’s made up. I have a raised nesting boxes and underneath it I wrapped landscape fabric. Inside will have a small radiator heater (700w) max output- standard outlet could handle approximately 1800w from my understanding. Radiator heaters also draw the least amount of power of any plug-in heaters that I researched, let me know if I’m wrong. I cut out openings underneath nesting area to allow heat to come through... hopefully this keeps eggs warmer. I also added curtains to each nesting box to keep heat in for a longer period of time. I will finish putting in bedding in each one and installing the heater this weekend Sat. 11/27/21. I’m hoping this works or I’ll think of something else
If it is rated for 700 W, it draws 700W on full power. All electric heaters are 100% efficient. That is a lot of power. I am assuming you would have some kind of thermostatic control, but still, that it is a lot for a confined space.

One concern about heating the nesting box is that the chickens might want to just hang out in there all day and/or sleep in there if you don't have an overnight timer. Since you seem to have a roll-away trough, another option could be to just heat trace the through. You can get 5W/m heat tape at Canadian Tire and just run that along the trough. Put it on a timer to just run during the day as well.
 
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If it is rated for 700 W, it draws 700W on full power. All electric heaters are 100% efficient. That is a lot of power. I am assuming you would have some kind of thermostatic control, but still, that it is a lot for a confined space.

One concern about heating the nesting box is that the chickens might want to just hang out in there all day and/or sleep in there if you don't have an overnight timer. Since you seem to have a roll-away trough, another option could be to just heat trace the through. You can get 5W/m heat tape at Canadian Tire and just run that along the trough. Put it on a timer to just run during the day a
If it is rated for 700 W, it draws 700W on full power. All electric heaters are 100% efficient. That is a lot of power. I am assuming you would have some kind of thermostatic control, but still, that it is a lot for a confined space.

One concern about heating the nesting box is that the chickens might want to just hang out in there all day and/or sleep in there if you don't have an overnight timer. Since you seem to have a roll-away trough, another option could be to just heat trace the through. You can get 5W/m heat tape at Canadian Tire and just run that along the trough. Put it on a timer to just run during the day as well.
That’s what I was thinking if all fails lol. There is an opening from the bottom section to the trough section that’ll allow warm air into the area. It’s not the best but I’ll see what happens. I just finished sealing the underside of trough. I will put a thermometer in there to check temperature since the heater only has a dial system that doesn’t display temperature. And yes, I will keep a close eye on my hens from chillaxin’ too much in boxes. They normally hate being stuck indoors since they’ve been free range raised. They like to stay outside in -15°c temps.(I’ve temporarily have used plywood sheets as wind breakers where they like to hang out and gossip) I still need to build a top cover piece over heater to prevent unwanted debris from falling on it from openings I cut.
 

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If it is rated for 700 W, it draws 700W on full power. All electric heaters are 100% efficient. That is a lot of power. I am assuming you would have some kind of thermostatic control, but still, that it is a lot for a confined space.

One concern about heating the nesting box is that the chickens might want to just hang out in there all day and/or sleep in there if you don't have an overnight timer. Since you seem to have a roll-away trough, another option could be to just heat trace the through. You can get 5W/m heat tape at Canadian Tire and just run that along the trough. Put it on a timer to just run during the day as well.
Good points Subarticfowl. One fiqure I have seen tossed around is that 1 adult bird gives off about 10 watts of heat. So in theory 700 watts would be like having 70 birds in the coop! Based on that my coop would be full with 16 birds IF they could go outside every day and so 160 watts of electric heat would be an equivalent to how warm my coop would be if I stuffed it full of chickens.
 

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