"The Cold Coop" page (designing/managing coop for cold winter weather)

[Equus5O]

Pat,

Thanks for the information. I really do need to get my husband to read it. He's the one who wants to put a 500 watt bulb in the coop!

Sandra

 

[CityChook]

Nice page, Pat. Kind of a bummer to start thinking about winter already...

 

[vtchickenlady]

Last winter we did the deep litter method using hay. We have a passive solar design w/ coop up against ledge and a poured concrete floor on top of ledge. Its located just below our driveway so when we plowed the drive we were able to pile the snow right up against the backside of the coop. Never had humidity problems from that. We also piled bales of hay up against the building on the other two sides, just under the windows. We used the hay eventually and it served as insulation in the mean time. We also kept the pop door open covered by an old shower curtain cut in strips to serve as a wind breaker. The coop never got below 16. In the very cold months (Jan/Feb) we added a heat lamp, but not every night -just when it got below 0 outside. The heat lamp would make it right about 28. I do have one question. Does anyone know how much electricity it costs to run a heated water bowl? We did the switcheroo thing last year but that got old after awhile.

 

[bigoakhunter]

Pat,

NIce info on cold weather coops!


Insulate and venilate..... I am also looking at the big heated dog dish for winter water. Vt chicken lady, so thanks for the question.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Depends what kind. The heated dog bowl type are fairly low wattage if I remember correctly, maybe 60w??? and mine has a thermostat so it clicks on and off, thus you are not using that wattage *all* the time. Heated waterer bases for metal founts, or the plastic waterers with a heater built into the bottom, are more in the 100-120w range IIRC.

For whatever appliance you are considering, look at its label to find out what wattage it is; multiply by 24 and then again by 30 and divide by 1000 to get how many kilowatt-hours it will use per month; then multiply by whatever your local electrical rate is (cents per kW-hr). In some cases this will be accurate, in other cases (if there is a thermostat that switches it off a lot of the time) your actual bill will be lower.

With our rates here, a 250w heatlamp (or anything else 250w, such as a pair of 125-w heated waterer bases) costs somewheres around $30/month to run.

One thing you can do is to do, as you say, "the old switcheroo" when temps are warm enough that simply bringing fresh water in the morning will be enough to last all day, and only bring out the electrical appliances when temps get cold enough that you'd have to be ferrying fresh water out several times a day.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat