The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[mlowen]

So my inside coop temperature is 10F. I chose not to put a heat lamp in the coop, but now I am a little nervous. My hubby keeps telling me we should have put a heat lamp in there. I know that many of you have temperatures much lower.... Please tell me that my chickens are going to be fine.... I added 2 extra bags of leaves, covered some lower vents, fed some warm oatmeal right before roosting, as well as a little extra scratch. My coop is 5x8, with 2 small triangle vents on each end ( I covered the lower ones) and then one vent on the back side that is open all the time, and a window on the front that is currently closed. I didn't feel any drafts when I climbed in there to check.

Inside my coop got down to -14 on Saturday. No heat, no insulation, lots of ventilation, wind/drafts blocked. All 5 were just fine...eating, drinking (warm water I brought in,) pooping, scratching. I would probably worry at -25 & -30, like some of our fellow BYC-ers in the midwest, but here in Maine--comparatively speaking--it's been reasonable.

 

[armorfirelady]

-8 here now with wind chills -30. I just peeked in on girls and all is well. Need to go back out when it's light out and block the few places snow is coming in still. It's going to be dry feed until temps start rising. And a bowl of snow for water. Water is going to freeze to fast and they eat snow all the time.

LALA & Del you can have your weather back !!

 

[lalaland]

-8 here now with wind chills -30. I just peeked in on girls and all is well. Need to go back out when it's light out and block the few places snow is coming in still. It's going to be dry feed until temps start rising. And a bowl of snow for water. Water is going to freeze to fast and they eat snow all the time.

LALA & Del you can have your weather back !!

I'm sorry it is -26 here this morning, and I don't care what the windchill is. Del is right, it hurts your forehead and it also hurts to breath in - have to breath in thru your mouth and out thru your nose. Takes thinking!

Got home yesterday and all 5 eggs that were laid were busted wide open by the freeze. Cooking them up this morning and giving them back with some meatloaf, codliver oil, and oats. Don't you wish I would cook you breakfast?

AFL, they will eat snow but I've heard they really can't get enough water that way, so it might be worth it to give them water too that they can drink til it freezes. Mine are getting mostly dry feed too - the wet stuff just freezes into a block.

I tried a pellet feed and they won't eat it. am mixing it in with scratch and various grains and boss, so they eat a little that way but ignore the feeder with straight pellets. The nutritional balance is all going to heck as I try to get them something they can eat in this cold. Must be like eating junk food on vacation, they will be fine when it warms up and they can get good feed again.

I'm staying home today so I will be able to refresh the water and hopefully get those eggs before they crack open. it might get up to just about zero....and it is supposed to be in the high 20's above zero by saturday.
so warmer times ahead!

 

[Trifele]

I am new to the site. We are also new to chickens since July of last year. Just want to say what a great resource the site is. Thank you all for sharing your wisdom!

We have a small backyard flock of 4 (2 EEs, BA, and a Gold Star). We are in Wisconsin and are used to cold winter weather. Until this week, our lowest overnight low this winter had been -15. Our coop is not insulated and not heated, but is well ventilated and has all drafts blocked. Our chooks have a flat roosting board, 3" wide covered in flat-pile carpeting. Even with daytime winter highs in the low single digits, the chooks come outside during the day into their covered run, scratch, act normal. I wouldn't say they are happy, exactly, (I'm sure we'd all prefer to have warmer temps, grass, bugs, etc) but they seemed to be doing fine. Our philosophy so far has been that as long as the girls have a ventilated place to roost at night, with still air, plenty of food and plenty of water, they will be fine. Wild birds make do with much less.

THEN came the current cold snap. When overnight lows of -25 were forecast, with wind chills of -60, I got seriously nervous. I had read that our chicken breeds are cold hardy down to -25 or so, but as a newbie I did not feel good about testing their limits. We had not ever planned to use heat in the coop, but finally I broke down and asked hubby to mount a heat lamp in one corner, where the chooks could either get close to it if they chose, or stay away from it. (The lamp is mounted to a wall, high away from any litter).

The cold snap did not disappoint us -- Our HIGH yesterday was -13, and our overnight lows have been near -25. Two days into the cold snap, the chooks seem to be doing extremely well. The heat lamp only raised the internal temperature of the coop at night by 4 or 5 degrees, less than I would have thought. But I think it gave the girls an optional place to go for a warm up if they wanted it. Three of the four chooks chose to roost near it at night, and one (the BA) chose to roost away from it. She apparently did not need/want it at all. I have been feeding them some calorie-dense extras -- meal worms and boiled egg yolks -- which they like. Not sure if they really need extra food (?) but they seem to like it a lot.

(And I just have to share -- so excited -- that the EE sisters Irene and Penelope both chose yesterday to lay their very first eggs! I could not believe it -- one light blue egg and one sort of stone-colored. They are 26 weeks and I thought they'd wait til spring. Our Gold Star and BA have been laying for about a month already. )

As for the heat in the coop -- I think they all probably would have been fine with no heat at all, but I felt better doing it for them. I will continue to go with no heat under normal circumstances.

 

[Trifele]

LaLa -- thank you for your posts. It is very comforting to read the experiences of someone even further north than we are!

 

[aoxa]

Oh guys, you won't believe it.. My wry neck girl - I didn't have the chance to put her down yet, and thankfully I didn't - she is coming around!! :O I was in shock to see her with a full crop tonight, and she went and walked over for more right after. I am so impressed with her Yay!

In case you missed the discussion we had on Friday, there is this silkie pullet I was going to cull because her head was literally tucked way under her belly and she could not walk this weekend. Time got away from me and we decided to cull her today instead. Well as fate would have it, she can tuck her head under her wing to sleep (like any normal sleeping chicken), eat on her own, and walk! Her neck is still a little crooked, but she is improving without any treatment at all.

I was getting attached. I kept hand feeding her hoping she would come around.

 

[lalaland]

Oh guys, you won't believe it.. My wry neck girl - I didn't have the chance to put her down yet, and thankfully I didn't - she is coming around!! :O I was in shock to see her with a full crop tonight, and she went and walked over for more right after. I am so impressed with her Yay!

In case you missed the discussion we had on Friday, there is this silkie pullet I was going to cull because her head was literally tucked way under her belly and she could not walk this weekend. Time got away from me and we decided to cull her today instead. Well as fate would have it, she can tuck her head under her wing to sleep (like any normal sleeping chicken), eat on her own, and walk! Her neck is still a little crooked, but she is improving without any treatment at all.

I was getting attached. I kept hand feeding her hoping she would come around.

wonderful! I am so glad - it seemed like with treatment and time there was a good chance for that to happen. I was reading that a peck on a silkie head could cause that and time would let the brain injury heal and here she got better without any extra vitamins, etc!

 

[lalaland]

LaLa -- thank you for your posts. It is very comforting to read the experiences of someone even further north than we are!

Trifele, you are welcome and welcome to the thread! we all learn so much from each other - I'm willing to be there isn't anyone on this thread that has tried something different or changed something because of what they have read/learned from others.

Delisha is in Wis too ---

I laughed when I read that you too were determined to do without heat - my thinking too - even won a byc contest on hints for chickens in cold weather because I said stick your fingers under the feathers to reassure yourself they are warm without extra heat. But...this is a vicious cold spell, lasting 3 or 4 weeks already with a few tiny breaks of a day or so...and I was finding some of my smaller less feathered/fluffy chickens weren't so darned toasty under their feathers.

I'll pull the heat lamps as soon as it warms up to normal temps, which might be this weekend.

 

[aoxa]

wonderful! I am so glad - it seemed like with treatment and time there was a good chance for that to happen. I was reading that a peck on a silkie head could cause that and time would let the brain injury heal and here she got better without any extra vitamins, etc!

She's going to need a name...

Anyone have anything funny and clever?

I need to get a picture of her, but she definitely needs a bath. White Silkie + FF and wry neck = dirty dirty silkie lol

Very happy she has come around.

 

[RedRidge]

We are at -2 here this morning... I offer water every 4 hours during the daylight but that's about it. No heat or heat lamps. Breeding pens don't even have a front normally but I did hang a tarp to break the wind.
Since I feed FF I simply offer each coop a few spoonfuls throughout the day and keep the bowls inside with the rest the day's feed.
My birds are all out of the wind and happy and fine... they are a lot warmer and hardier than people think.