The Great Winter Coop Humidity/Ventilation Experiment! Post Your Results Here!

[Beekissed]

@Beekissed aww thanks for the nice compliment! HOA rules say any existing structure has to match the house (!) I guess it does! I wish it were bigger cause I am super-maxed on number of chickens, but I am relieved and pleased that even this small structure is working rather well. It is close to the front door but almost invisible from the road above, and it JUST fit into the space I had for it. Even though there is more land, it was most convenient to put this inside larger fenced front yard. Which gives chickens a lot more room to roam safely.

I wish the guy who made the coop knew as much about chicken keeping (ventilation, predator proofing, roost heights ) as he does about carpentry, but I fixed most of the problems over the summer learning as I went, and now I believe it is paying off. If anyone buys from a coop seller, ask them if they keep chickens.

That seems to be a chronic problem all over the world....the people selling coops are not those who have ever used them, so they list them as being able to keep X number of chickens in the coop, when most barely have room to keep even one bird in comfort for very long.

 

[mobius]

Morning Update:

Temps are getting warmer but results are interesting now because let's see how coop functions in different winter temperatures!

7 pm

Birds put selves to bed at 5 pm

Outside: 16F RH 80%
Coop: 22F RH 78%

Oops! RH getting into danger zone! Let's open a vent! Small vent opposite window opened all the way. (It was closed because of minus zero temps). Window (another source of ventilation) is not open and has not been all along.

And I watched the RH drop, drop, drop slowly, until:

9:30 pm

Outside: 15F RH 83%
Coop: 21F RH 74%

Out of danger zone. More monitoring indicated RH stabilized at same until midnight when I stopped watching. I am liking the stabliized part! Seems to happen every evening a few hours after chickens are roosting.

8 a.m.

Birds still in coop

Outside: 20F RH 81%
Coop: 29F RH 75%

All is good! And I should add, the chickens' combs look great! That is another data point, of course!

 

[lazy gardener]

Excellent thread material. Loving it. What do you consider to be the danger zone for RH? And where are you measuring it? Is there any difference between floor level and roost level??????

@Beekissed aww thanks for the nice compliment! HOA rules say any existing structure has to match the house (!) I guess it does! I wish it were bigger cause I am super-maxed on number of chickens, but I am relieved and pleased that even this small structure is working rather well. It is close to the front door but almost invisible from the road above, and it JUST fit into the space I had for it. Even though there is more land, it was most convenient to put this inside larger fenced front yard. Which gives chickens a lot more room to roam safely.

I wish the guy who made the coop knew as much about chicken keeping (ventilation, predator proofing, roost heights ) as he does about carpentry, but I fixed most of the problems over the summer learning as I went, and now I believe it is paying off. If anyone buys from a coop seller, ask them if they keep chickens.

I agree with above statement. Pre-fab coops, even those sold at the feed stores are usually pathetic in design. Lots of fluff, minimum strength in framing and sheathing materials. Not even enough room for head space above roosts and adequate bedding space below the roosts. Grossly overstating their capacity. Not allowing enough room for even the most restricted movement of the birds. Too much nest space for number of birds to be housed. I wonder if they over do the nesting, so the newbie will look at all of that nest space, and envision those nests full of eggs every morning???? Hmmm.... more nest = more eggs?????

 

[mobius]

hi @lazy gardener and thank you for the kind compliment!

Hygrometer is at beak level when they are roosting for the night. I am not measuring it at floor level...they aren't spending much time in the coop except at night...

Quoted from @patandchickens

Commercial chicken barns seem to aim for around 50-70% humidity. IMO for backyard flock purposes it's when you get to 75-80% that you start getting a bit iffy, and I'd say above 85-90% humidity is really courting trouble.

HYGROMETERS ARE NOT USUALLY ACCURATE right out of the package; you need to use something like the salt method (see 'incubating and brooding eggs' section of BYC forum for instructions) to figure out how wrong yours is so you know how much to add or subtract to its reading. I would not suggest believing a hygrometer reading otherwise

This info was about all I could find after a lot of searching...if others have more, please feel free to post!

I will add this info to original top post as well as a link about hygrometers from another thread...

 

[lazy gardener]

Also, to add to the questions: commercial chicken barns are not dealing with sub 0 temps on a regular basis, and have mechanical ventilation at their disposal. I'm wondering what temp extremes commercial operations operate under. That might make a difference in comparing the BYF to the commercial model. They are more often in need of exhausting heat than they are of adding it. I do know that they work with formulas regarding optimum caloric use which is closely related to temperature. So, they are not willing to let their flocks get cold b/c it affects their bottom line. Just raising more discussion ?'s here. Not criticism!!!!

No accurate hygrometer here. (perhaps santa will oblige) I have an ancient thermo/hygro in coop. 10 minutes ago, outside temp 7*F, coop temp 21*F. Bedding: dry leaves. 2/3 Windows cracked open, eave, soffit vents open. Opened pop door after temp check.

 

[mobius]

@lazy gardener

All good questions! Other than what others have mentioned above/earlier in regard to poultry keeping manuals and their own experience, etc, I don't know! it is all interesting however!

 

[Beekissed]

Also, to add to the questions: commercial chicken barns are not dealing with sub 0 temps on a regular basis, and have mechanical ventilation at their disposal. I'm wondering what temp extremes commercial operations operate under. That might make a difference in comparing the BYF to the commercial model. They are more often in need of exhausting heat than they are of adding it. I do know that they work with formulas regarding optimum caloric use which is closely related to temperature. So, they are not willing to let their flocks get cold b/c it affects their bottom line. Just raising more discussion ?'s here. Not criticism!!!!

No accurate hygrometer here. (perhaps santa will oblige) I have an ancient thermo/hygro in coop. 10 minutes ago, outside temp 7*F, coop temp 21*F. Bedding: dry leaves. 2/3 Windows cracked open, eave, soffit vents open. Opened pop door after temp check.

Where I live commercial poultry houses get subzero temps each winter....I've never heard of them heating the buildings but maybe they do? Not sure. The commercial turkey houses are open air situations, so I'm thinking they can't heat those as effectively. Maybe the body heat of the thousands of birds they keep heat those houses, as in the aforementioned BTUs per bird?

 

[aart]

hi @lazy gardener and thank you for the kind compliment!

Hygrometer is at beak level when they are roosting for the night. I am not measuring it at floor level...they aren't spending much time in the coop except at night...

Quoted from @patandchickens

Commercial chicken barns seem to aim for around 50-70% humidity. IMO for backyard flock purposes it's when you get to 75-80% that you start getting a bit iffy, and I'd say above 85-90% humidity is really courting trouble.

HYGROMETERS ARE NOT USUALLY ACCURATE right out of the package; you need to use something like the salt method (see 'incubating and brooding eggs' section of BYC forum for instructions) to figure out how wrong yours is so you know how much to add or subtract to its reading. I would not suggest believing a hygrometer reading otherwise

This info was about all I could find after a lot of searching...if others have more, please feel free to post!

I will add this info to original top post as well as a link about hygrometers from another thread...

Pats post on humidity may not have been written in regards to frostbite.
There really are no hard numbers.
Collected data is very easily skewed with inaccuracy of devices and other variables that may not be taken into account...
....in this application with BYC's at most it's an exercise in curiosity and observation. Best to be careful not to draw any hard conclusions.
Yikes, I've designed, overseen, executed, and analyzed tooooooo many engineering studies.

 

[lazy gardener]

Doing a bit of sleuthing for conditions of commercial layer houses for comparison. So far not finding much as it relates to Arctic conditions. Here's a dismal start:


Manaaincl Layina House Temperatures to Improve Flock Performance and Profitabilitv . by Donald Bell, Poultry Specialist, University of California, Riverside Introduction A survey of commercial egg laying facilities in 1991 indicated that more than 70% of the laying hens in the U.S. were maintained in controlled environment housing and by the year 2000, this would exceed 82%. The survey also concluded that by the turn of the century, more than 38% of these houses would be cooled with either foggers or evaporative cooling systems. Since this survey was conducted, practically all new housing built in the U.S. has been of the controlled environment type (ref. #l).

Will continue searching for winter open poultry housing temps in NE.

 

[mobius]

Pats post on humidity may not have been written in regards to frostbite.
There really are no hard numbers.
Collected data is very easily skewed with inaccuracy of devices and other variables that may not be taken into account...
....in this application with BYC's at most it's an exercise in curiosity and observation. Best to be careful not to draw any hard conclusions.
Yikes, I've designed, overseen, executed, and analyzed tooooooo many engineering studies.

Yes there really are no hard numbers. Pat's point did have to do with winter flock keeping. I suggest to you this is the best we have at the moment. And better than what we HAVE had, which has involved a lot of guessing, wrong information, confusion, frustration, anxiety, sleepless nights, heating lamps and reciprocating saws.

Oh! And did I mention injured and sick chickens and the horrors of coop fires as well as property losses.

And IMO it is the best I have to keep my chickens alive and healthy through the winter. I encourage everyone concerned about their chickens to follow a similar protocol, because YCMV (Your Chickens May Vary). Monitor and tweak.

There were a couple posts earlier that stated (by folks far more experienced than I) that the coop was showing balanced air flow, ventilation and humidity. Further important here is the point that, depending upon coop etc, chickens can add heat and lower humidity in the coop, with judicious adjustment of ventilation in varying weather conditions.

If you would like a statement of hypothesis and identification of variables I have been extensively trained in research methodology, experimental design and statistical analysis. I won't throw in the curriculum vitae. Even though I fell out of the chicken coop yesterday