We are having a week-long "Arctic Freeze", as most of the country is. I am glad we heated. One of the girls got a bit of frostbite on one ear lobe. She may have splashed water on it (water freezes almost instantly when poured or sloshed out of the bowl), When the temperatures get back to 20s and 30s at night, I am sure they won't need the heat. If I heated their coop when it is thirty degrees, it would be at least sixty degrees inside it. They don't need it that warm, for sure! The wind chill tonight is supposed to be in the negative figures. I do like getting eggs every day. That's the biggest benefit for us.
Frostbite means high humidity not low temp and yes, if they get wet, it will freeze. One of my Ancona girls had a little graying on her wattles earlier this winter. They have nipple waterers and I'm sure they get a drip or two once in a while. Both the Anconas (stupidly HUGE combs) and ONLY the Anconas had some graying winter of 2013 but no frost bite loss. Come the moult, their combs shrank to nothing and came back just fine.
Windchill means
NOTHING unless the wind blows through your coop and over your chickens. And if that is the case, you need to redesign.
Heat doesn't give you eggs any more than having a rooster gives you eggs. 14 hours of light fools their bodies into "thinking" it is summer, egg laying season.
I wasn't planning to heat my coop at all, but several of my girls started sporting pale, frostbite-y looking tips to their combs after 3 days with lows around 0 and highs in the teens . . . I have 8 pullets (well, all laying but not yet 1). My coop is 4x4 + a row of next boxes. It's in a fairly sheltered area, and as ventilated as I can make it without opening the window to blow right on them. I've wrapped potential drafts with plastic. Because they're showing frostbite, I've added a 60w ceramic heat bulb. The water still froze solid in the coop, with the bulb running. I don't want to heat the coop, but I don't want to lose combs/wattles/toes etc. I'm going to cover a portion of the run later this week, once it warms up to the 30s and some of the snow melts. Other suggestions? After 3 or 4 days with the lamp (and the water still freezing) can I remove the lamp once lows are back in the 20s? Help!
Again, gray means excess humidity, maybe the coop needs a redesign. The ONLY thing you need to heat is the water, the chickens heat themselves and have the BEST natural insulation. And if you are around during the day, you can take water out several times a day and not bother with heating the water in the coop at all. They don't drink after dark anyway.
Im concerned about my girls to...But.. I tryed to put my heat lamp on couple weeks ago when we had a cold snap. But my girls wouldnt go in the coop made a lot of noises and thay slept out in the run. I fig they wernt happy with that. i felt bad. I do use a light during the day. It comes on at 6am our time wife opens up the coop to there run before work the girls seem to like it..I leave it on all day so they hav som warmth as an option..And the light goes of at 430ish..and we close up the coop. Iv checked on them on rainy cold and windy nights allready ben down to 9 here.. They seem happy on there stick and not all huddled together..With no light. So far so good..
Great you figured out they don't need or want the heat. In fact yours TOLD you they REALLY don't want the heat by sleeping outside when they naturally prefer to be up on the roost in a safe place.
All those who think they should heat their coops - try this:
- Get dressed in your warmest clothes (down if you have it) like you would if you knew you needed to sit outside for a long time.
- Go to the grocery store and do your weekly shopping. Do NOT take anything off, do NOT unzip your coat.
- See how UNCOMFORTABLY HOT you are when you simulate being a chicken in a heated coop.
But they don't need the electric light during the day either, unless you have them locked in a windowless dungeon.
It is -10 here. Girls seem ok. I have their waterer on a small heat source and it's working nicely. We made the cookie tin heater with a 25 watt bulb.
I have their light on a timer to come on about 6:00 am and shuts off at 5:00. By 4:30 they are already on their roosts as it is getting dark by then.
They are totally inside with a little run inside our carriage house with lots of straw.
It still gets cold in there.
It still gets cold in there
AND THEY ARE FINE WITH THAT!
There is NO REASON to have a light on during daylight hours if there is ANY amount of natural light. And, IMHO, if there is no natural light, you need to redesign the coop so it has some windows.
Light for the sake of light: I have one that goes on in the coop not long before sundown so they will be IN the coop when the auto door closes (though once in awhile, one misses and has to sleep in the barn alley instead of the coop anyway) and goes off not long after.
The 14 hours of light to max egg laying:
1) It doesn't have to be much light. Unless the coop is totally dark, save the electricity during daylight hours.
2) My girls are here to lay eggs, but they are animals, not machines so I don't push them with extra light.
I have a small heater in my coop. It is set to come on at approximately 25 degrees. I put hay in the bottom of the coop. I don't want to worry about frost bite.
HUGE waste of electricity.
Again, chickens
DO NOT NEED and
DO NOT WANT heat.
I have 12 chickens. One "decided" to moult in November. One "decided" to moult 2 weeks ago. 2 of the 5 nipples in my "built into the insulated floor nest box nipple water pipe" in the coop decided to fail (how I do not know, I have to take the box apart to get to the nipples when it warms up, I'm not a well insulated chicken and don't have a heated "coop" to work in
) the night before Thanksgiving,
Since I had to disconnect the water to the nest box water pipe, I have had to put a heat lamp over the plastic waterer (outside the coop) any time it is below about 15F. Above 15F, the new "not in the coop" uninsulated 2 nipple pipe is fine (water is circulated by a SMALL pump in an insulated 5 gallon drink cooler heated to ~70F by an aquarium heater). I might fashion one of the cookie tin heaters for next year "just in case". That 250W usage adds up fast - 6 kW a day.
READ THIS:
NOT ONE chicken hangs near the 250W heat lamp over the waterer when the lamp is on. Not those fully feathered and not the ones that are as featherless as a moulted chicken gets.
NOT ONE
Even though the moulting chicken is either ostracized or chooses not to hang with the other girls during the day (I don't know which but it held true for all of them when they moulted), it does
NOT go to the heat.
If a chicken missing half its feathers doesn't hang near heat when it is -20F
WHY do people think the chickens need heat ?????
Make sure there is:
VENTILATION
NO DRAFTS
Food
Water
Roosts high up
Nest boxes (if they are layers)
Bruce
I don't mind the girls taking a break from laying...they all just went through a molt anyway and my Leghorn, Daisy finally decided to get on the molt bandwagon this week...she's my egg machine....she's hardly missed a day since she was 16 weeks until now, lol. Of course she's not super smart, she picked the coldest week so far to molt. She started sleeping in the nest box when she started molting because I think it's warmer...and I don't have the heart to kick her out at least until she starts growing back in...hehe.
