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- #11
AmberNate
Chirping
Thank you! These are my very first chicks/chickens! I don't even have the coops yet. We ordered it and will be putting it together in the next week or two. I've read upper ventilation is very important. We got these babies the week before Xmas and they were 2-3 days old. So they've only ever known the indoors. They're getting so antsy. I don't want to shock them going from 65 degrees to 30. I might need to move the brooder into a room that's around 50? And start to slowly ween them down?What does your coop look like? I'm mostly wondering about ventilation and wind protection, but size is also important. With that few it sounds like you may have a pretty small coop. Do you have older chickens in the coop where you have integration issues?
I've had 5-1/2 week old chicks go through nights in the mid 20's Fahrenheit with no supplemental heat. To me yours meet the age requirement. My chicks had great ventilation up high (practically wide open) and great wind protection down low where they were. I don't know if your coop has that. Mine were also acclimated. They were raised in a brooder in my coop where one end of the brooder was kept toasty warm but the far end of the brooder could cool off as it would. Sometimes I found ice on that end, so my chicks were exposed to cold weather.
My suggestion is to take them outside for a while during the day when you can watch them. See how they react. This will help them get acclimated but, just as important, it lets you see how they behave in cold weather. You may decide that it bothers you a lot more than it does them.
I don't now if the 20's is your daily high or daily low. The high doesn't matter, the low is what is important. And it's not an average low, but what extremes they might see. I do think it helps for them to be acclimatized, but I also think that they can handle cold like the wild birds that overwinter where you are. The big difference in yours, once they are acclimatized, is that wild birds can decide where they sleep at night. Ours have to make do with the coops we provide, that's why I'm asking about yours.
Something to think on. How great is the ventilation where the wild birds are sleeping? They will hide from a wind but they are not trapped in an airtight location. Decent ventilation is important.