Unexpected Benefit of Raising Chicks in the Fall

[BaileyMChicks]

@BaileyMChicks , I lived in the upper midwest, too, so appreciate how cold it gets in your neck of the woods (who knew the moisture in your nose could immediately freeze?). Where I am now, it gets very chilly in the winter, with snow and/or ice. We've had stretches in the teens dipping into the single digits with wind chill. Last year, our rooster suffered some comb damage due to frostbite, so we now employ a "heat shelf" in the coop when it gets really cold. It's basically an anchored shelf made of wood and plastic mil that keeps the heat the chickens generate closer to them, so it doesn't rise up into the lofted roof of the coop. I have to add, also, that I think the fact that we lost about half our free ranging layers to predators (foxes and hawks) contributed to the heat problem in the coop - fewer bodies in there to generate warmth. Shouldn't be a problem this year since we have raised quite a few more chickens.

I don't use supplemental heat for our adult chickens, but will add more shavings on the floor to provide better insulation there, in addition to the heat shelf (if needed). In combination with proper coop ventilation, these measures should prepare the chickens for the cold days to come.

I have a group of chicks, too, but they're nearly 6 weeks old now and well-feathered. One of my hatching considerations was timing it so they would be ready for integration prior to the worst of winter weather. Brooding in the garage at night isn't great with all the dust they create (they're in a tractor on pasture during the day), so I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can get them into the coop!

Last year almost all of my roosters had some sort of frostbite issue going on. I saved the entire blade of my banty cross rooster's comb by constantly smothering it in bag balm(he only lost the very tips of his comb. Single comb btw), but my wyandotte cross rooster lost over half of one wattle, and a fourth of the other. They kept getting wet in the water from the waterer and refreezing at night...Like the wattle itself froze...I felt so bad for him. I smothered both of his wattles in bag balm and tried to warm them up as much as I could, but i couldn't fix it.

Our coop used to be a milk tank room thingy(don't know the actual name for it lol. The people who had the property before us had cows.), so the ceiling is pretty low. The floor is concrete, but I put a lot of shavings down. I had about 40 chickens in there last year(I also had to put a heat lamp in there) but I think I'm only going to have about 30 this year. I got hit with mareks pretty hard, plus I think I might have an MG problem arising...So I'm definitely going to have to have a heat lamp. And last year was actually a warmer winter. I know, hard to believe, right? And yeah, it's always weird feeling the moisture in your nose freeze right after you step out of the house. If we ever had a winter here where it only seldom got into single digits, I'd think the world was gunna expode or burn up or something. It's really hard for me to take care of the chickens in the winter, because I have joint issues in my hands(and also sensory issues), so I hate wearing gloves. So I go out in -40 degree (with windchill) weather without gloves on...I have almost gotten frostbite too many times to count. I always have to stop and stick my hands under one of the chicken's wings to keep my hands from going completely numb..

And here's the story of how I ended up with 2 D'uccle bantam chicks in October up in the freezing northwoods. It all started when a breeder I was going to said they wanted to get rid of all their D'Uccles. I decided to buy them from them. I got 3 roosters, nine hens, and a young cockerel one of the hens had hatched out without them knowing in the back of the barn. So, when the day came to go and get the D'Uccles, one of the hens had been sitting on 4 eggs. Well, turns out 2 already had embryos developing. One was about 6 days along, and the other about 4. So I took and put the 2 eggs in my little brinsea mini eco incubator, and a few weeks later, out popped 2 cute little nuggets. I had never planned on hatching anything out this late in the year, especially with the weather up here, but I had no intentions of letting 2 little innocent chicks die for no good reason. After I had moved all the birds to my property the hen had broke from being broody, so I had to take and hatch them myself. I just hope everything goes ok this year.

 

[ckelley]

We get -20 to -45 here. I bought some emergency camp blankets and plan on lining the walls of the coop and the ceiling. It is that reflective foil material, but thicker, so it will not tear. I'm not going to cover up the ventilation at the top of my coop, but I do want the heat they generate to be reflected back to them. It sounds like this is what your heat shelf does as well.

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

Last year almost all of my roosters had some sort of frostbite issue going on.  I saved the entire blade of my banty cross rooster's comb by constantly smothering it in bag balm(he only lost the very tips of his comb.  Single comb btw), but my wyandotte cross rooster lost over half of one wattle, and a fourth of the other.  They kept getting wet in the water from the waterer and refreezing at night...Like the wattle itself froze...I felt so bad for him. I smothered both of his wattles in bag balm and tried to warm them up as much as I could, but i couldn't fix it.  

Our coop used to be a milk tank room thingy(don't know the actual name for it lol.  The people who had the property before us had cows.), so the ceiling is pretty low.  The floor is concrete, but I put a lot of shavings down.  I had about 40 chickens in there last year(I also had to put a heat lamp in there) but I think I'm only going to have about 30 this year.  I got hit with mareks pretty hard, plus I think I might have an MG problem arising...So I'm definitely going to have to have a heat lamp.  And last year was actually a warmer winter.  I know, hard to believe, right?  And yeah, it's always weird feeling the moisture in your nose freeze right after you step out of the house.  If we ever had a winter here where it only seldom got into single digits, I'd think the world was gunna expode or burn up or something.  It's really hard for me to take care of the chickens in the winter, because I have joint issues in my hands(and also sensory issues), so I hate wearing gloves.  So I go out in -40 degree (with windchill) weather without gloves on...I have almost gotten frostbite too many times to count.  I always have to stop and stick my hands under one of the chicken's wings to keep my hands from going completely numb..

And here's the story of how I ended up with 2 D'uccle bantam chicks in October up in the freezing northwoods.  It all started when a breeder I was going to said they wanted to get rid of all their D'Uccles.  I decided to buy them from them.  I got 3 roosters, nine hens, and a young cockerel one of the hens had hatched out without them knowing in the back of the barn.  So, when the day came to go and get the D'Uccles, one of the hens had been sitting on 4 eggs.  Well, turns out 2 already had embryos developing.  One was about 6 days along, and the other about 4.  So I took and put the 2 eggs in my little brinsea mini eco incubator, and a few weeks later, out popped 2 cute little nuggets.  I had never planned on hatching anything out this late in the year, especially with the weather up here, but I had no intentions of letting 2 little innocent chicks die for no good reason.  After I had moved all the birds to my property the hen had broke from being broody, so I had to take and hatch them myself.  I just hope everything goes ok this year.  

LOL..."cold" is definitely relative! I'm going to try the bag balm this winter, too - out flock roo is the guy in my avatar, a Brown Leghorn/New Hampshire Red cross with a big comb. He's already been sunburned this summer, but it wasn't too bad. I'm sure he'll just love being handled and having goop smeared on his comb.

I would have done the same thing with the eggs...and when you have a Brinsea, you just can't help but hatch stuff! I'm not that familiar with D'Uccles, though - do they handle the cold (in your case, arctic cold!) well? They probably don't have to worry about wind-chapped faces like we do! Or cracked and bloody hands. Good stuff, winter trials and tribulations...lol. I hope your winter goes smoothly, too!

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

Forgot to mention the silly ducks (I have Muscovies) - they kept trying to bathe too late in the day and went into the coop with frozen feathers.

I'll be putting out more buckets instead of tubs this winter!

 

[AUChickenGal]

Question for those raising fall chicks: At what age do you remove their heat source?

My chicks will be 4 weeks old on Monday. I was tentatively planning on bringing them home (they are being brooded by a coworker, about 5 miles away) in two weeks. We will be experiencing highs in the mid-to-high 70s and lows in the mid 50s during the time between now and then. The chicks are currently in a 4'x12' brooding stall with a heat lamp at only one end, and the lamp is only turned on between 7 pm and 9 am.

Obviously, if we have a sudden cold snap, then my plans will change, but does the 55-75 degree temperature range sound reasonable for bringing chicks home to a non-heated coop? The longer I wait, the lower the temperatures will drop, so I want to get them home and settled as soon as possible (there is no electricity source for my coop).

 

[Blooie]

Last year almost all of my roosters had some sort of frostbite issue going on. I saved the entire blade of my banty cross rooster's comb by constantly smothering it in bag balm(he only lost the very tips of his comb. Single comb btw), but my wyandotte cross rooster lost over half of one wattle, and a fourth of the other. They kept getting wet in the water from the waterer and refreezing at night...Like the wattle itself froze...I felt so bad for him. I smothered both of his wattles in bag balm and tried to warm them up as much as I could, but i couldn't fix it.

...So I'm definitely going to have to have a heat lamp. And last year was actually a warmer winter. I know, hard to believe, right? And yeah, it's always weird feeling the moisture in your nose freeze right after you step out of the house. ................................ So I go out in -40 degree (with windchill) weather without gloves on...I have almost gotten frostbite too many times to count. I always have to stop and stick my hands under one of the chicken's wings to keep my hands from going completely numb..

We get -20 to -45 here. I bought some emergency camp blankets and plan on lining the walls of the coop and the ceiling. It is that reflective foil material, but thicker, so it will not tear. I'm not going to cover up the ventilation at the top of my coop, but I do want the heat they generate to be reflected back to them. It sounds like this is what your heat shelf does as well.

I'm not going to address the question of chicks in the fall or the other illness you are fighting, but a couple of things in these posts sent off alarm bells for me. I sincerely hope you both take what I'm saying in the spirit it's intended...as information, NOT criticism. I"ll primarily be addressing the points in bold.

@BaileyMChicks The first thing to do is to change out your waterer if you can. If they are getting their wattles wet they are going to suffer damage. I'm assuming if you plan to put a heat lamp out there, you have power. So invest in a 5 gallon bucket with horizontal nipples and a small water tank heater that's approved for plastic. They exist and aren't hard to find. We've been using ours for 3 years now, same one. If that's not feasible, then raise the water up high enough so they don't have to hold their heads down too far to drink, dunking their wattles. That won't stop it completely, but it will help.

The sentence that really make me sit up was when you talked about you feeling the moisture in your nose freeze. That is EXACTLY what's happening to your chickens. A sealed up, heated coop invites moisture to build up, and that settles on combs and wattles and freezes just like the moisture in your warm, damp nose does. Ever put a few warm people into a cold car? What happens to the windows? Yep, condensation builds up and settles on the glass. If you have moisture in your coop that can't escape, it's going to settle on the warm combs and wattles of your birds. That moisture comes from their droppings, their breath, and if the water is in the coop, from there too. Despite a heat lamp (unless you are heating your coop to 70 degrees with it

) that condensation will freeze, especially at night when they are not moving. The key to healthy birds who get through the winter is not sealing the coop to keep warm air in. Warm air holds more moisture than cold air. Ventilation, not heating it and making it air tight, is better for your chickens than warmer, moist air. Put some vents in at a level higher than the roosts. Use a slanted board hung above the roosts to hold in the warmth that the chickens already have. Chickens do far better in cold than heat, as long as they are kept dry and out of drafts. So by ventilation I mean a route up high for the air you don't want in there to be able to get out but not so many openings at roost level that their feathers are blowing around. They have a nice down coat...one that we'd pay a fortune for...and it works very well when it's cold, just as it does for us. In both cases the down and feathers keep warmth trapped next to the body, where it's needed. But if you break the zipper on that coat, what happens to all that trapped warm air? Yep, it's gone. It's the same theory if either your coat or the chickens are damp or if the protective outer layer is disturbed so the trapped. warm air escapes.....insulation value drops through the floor. Dry and well ventilated is all they need.

Heat? Well, if your coop is dry and ventilated it's not really needed either. Let's go back to the down coat. We're pretty comfortable outside, but what's the first thing we do when we get into a heated room? That coat comes off because if we are overheated and we get uncomfortable. Oh, I know....we aren't chickens. But that's kind of my point. Our skin doesn't protect us from temperature variations...their feathers and down do. And again, warmer air holds moisture. I noticed that when your hands get cold, you put them under a chicken's wings to warm up. You can thank that warm, trapped air for that, and if their bodies are that warm under there they are fine...they don't need extra heat. They already have all they need. That said, if you do still want to take a little of the chill off, there are much safer options than heat lamps, such as Sweeter Heaters, etc. but remember that if your power goes out for a few days they'll be exposed suddenly to cold they haven't had a chance to acclimate to yet.



@ckelley Wind chill has no effect inside a coop if there is no strong wind blowing directly in. I hope the part of my post about sealing up the coop made sense. It's not necessary and can cause more harm than good. They don't need those vents covered...they need them open. In my coop I have the following ventilation:

South side: A window I can open or close depending on wind direction and a long vent under the roosts but above the floor, and an operable vent up high.
North side: An operable vent (it's actually a home heating/cooling vent that I can open or close, again, depending on wind) and a long narrow vent running vertically near the people door. I
can have that one open or closed, depending on the wind direction. In winter it's usually partially closed off because the nests are nearby and most of our wind and snow comes in from there.
East side: An operable window. A gable vent. A mobile home exhaust fan which I can either have closed and turned off, open without the fan running, or (in the summer and on warmer winter days),open with fan running. Their pop door, is open to the run 24/7
West side: Another operable window. A vent up high. A vent down almost at floor level, directly opposite the open pop door.

Hubby said he could have saved a ton of money on wood if he'd known we'd end up with more openings than walls!

When we first built the coop, I whined about the open area all the way around at the top where the roof meets the walls and insisted that hubby cover it as winter approached. He "forgot" and I'm glad he did....we ended up covering that gap with hardware cloth to keep out critters and it's been left alone ever since. Same with little gaps in the walls...and I said "little gaps" ,not caverns!

If I could see daylight through them I wanted them caulked. Didn't do that either. Still haven't.

The only real concession we make to winter is to partially cover our run with reinforced clear greenhouse plastic. Even then we do not seal it up completely. It's open at the bottom about 6 inches on the east and west sides. On the north we have a gap above the people door about 16" long and 8" inches or so high, following the arch of the run, which is a hoop run. The south side has a separate piece of plastic. That one is on a sort of "shade" system...simply the plastic rolled like a window shade and resting on the ground. In bad weather we can roll it as high as we want to it up and clamp it to the run...takes about 90 seconds.......but we never close it off completely. Otherwise it's open all the way. The first year we tried the plastic, we sealed that thing up, hoping to have a "greenhouse" type environment so the chickens wouldn't be have to be locked up in the coop all winter. Yeah, big mistake. Condensation ran down the inside of that plastic and if we were walking in there and bumped the roof drops of water dripped down our necks. Not good! The litter got wet, the chickens were getting wet, and we were getting wet. That's when we started leaving so much of it open and haven't had a problem since. In fact, I raise chicks out there in a pen within the run, even though our springtime temps are often still in the teens and twenties, we have 60 mph winds, and sideways blowing snow. I don't use a heat lamp. I just use a heating pad cave, and they thrive.

I know this is a lot to take in, and again none of this is criticism. We all tend to think of what our chickens need for comfort in terms of what WE need for comfort. We live in Northern Wyoming, not too far from Yellowstone Park. Last week (October 12) we had our first snowfall of the season...5-7 inches of it. The year we got our first batch of chicks we had our last snowfall of the year on June 6th,and I had put them out in the coop to live when they were only 5.5 weeks old. So like you, we know cold winters. I hope this information is helpful to you both. For good information about ventilation, there are several articles here on BYC. I don't have the link readily available, but if you put "ventilation" in the search box near the top of the page lots of good information will come up.

I wish you both a safe winter, and the very best of luck with your chickens!

Edited to add: Boy, that formatting on my ventilation list didn't work out well and I've been unable to fix it. Winters I know about, computers not so much! Hope you can make it out!

 

[AUChickenGal]

Question for those raising fall chicks: At what age do you remove their heat source?

My chicks will be 4 weeks old on Monday. I was tentatively planning on bringing them home (they are being brooded by a coworker, about 5 miles away) in two weeks. We will be experiencing highs in the mid-to-high 70s and lows in the mid 50s during the time between now and then. The chicks are currently in a 4'x12' brooding stall with a heat lamp at only one end, and the lamp is only turned on between 7 pm and 9 am.

Obviously, if we have a sudden cold snap, then my plans will change, but does the 55-75 degree temperature range sound reasonable for bringing chicks home to a non-heated coop? The longer I wait, the lower the temperatures will drop, so I want to get them home and settled as soon as possible (there is no electricity source for my coop).

@Blooie Any thoughts on my situation? I wasn't able to implement your MHP brooding system for these chicks, but I respect your knowledge. I'm anxious to get my chicks home, but I want them to be happy and healthy and will do whatever I have to do to make that happen.

 

[Blooie]

@Blooie Any thoughts on my situation? I wasn't able to implement your MHP brooding system for these chicks, but I respect your knowledge. I'm anxious to get my chicks home, but I want them to be happy and healthy and will do whatever I have to do to make that happen.

I'm sorry I missed your question earlier. Wonder why MHP didn't work for you? Hmmmm

Anyway, if my math is correct they should be close to 6 weeks old when you bring them home. Reducing the heat gradually at this point is the smartest thing you could be doing, since they haven't already been acclimated. You could actually cut it back even more, so they also get used to day/night cycles without freaking out when you get them home to the coop. Oh, they'll huddle and cuddle and shoot you the stink-eye.....that's more because they don't like change than anything else. But by 6 weeks old yours should be well feathered, and as long as they are out of direct drafts and kept dry, they should be just fine. You might even just turn the lamp off for longer times now and then completely off next week, while those temps are still relatively good, and let them acclimate before it gets colder.

I put my first chicks outside in an unheated, uninsulated coop when they were 5.5 weeks old.....I had to, it was self-defense and I was beginning to hate them.

Two days later we had a snowstorm. They did just great. As I mentioned, they huddled to keep warm, for the safety in numbers due to the strange new place, and to plot revenge against me for turning the lights off on them, leaving them in the <gasp> dark for the first time, but they forgave me!

 

[AUChickenGal]

I'm sorry I missed your question earlier. Wonder why MHP didn't work for you? Hmmmm

Anyway, if my math is correct they should be close to 6 weeks old when you bring them home. Reducing the heat gradually at this point is the smartest thing you could be doing, since they haven't already been acclimated. You could actually cut it back even more, so they also get used to day/night cycles without freaking out when you get them home to the coop. Oh, they'll huddle and cuddle and shoot you the stink-eye.....that's more because they don't like change than anything else. But by 6 weeks old yours should be well feathered, and as long as they are out of direct drafts and kept dry, they should be just fine. You might even just turn the lamp off for longer times now and then completely off next week, while those temps are still relatively good, and let them acclimate before it gets colder.

I put my first chicks outside in an unheated, uninsulated coop when they were 5.5 weeks old.....I had to, it was self-defense and I was beginning to hate them.

Two days later we had a snowstorm. They did just great. As I mentioned, they huddled to keep warm, for the safety in numbers due to the strange new place, and to plot revenge against me for turning the lights off on them, leaving them in the <gasp> dark for the first time, but they forgave me!

Thanks, @Blooie ! I feel much better now. MHP wasn't an option because I have no way to run power to my coop, and I was at the mercy of a very accommodating coworker.

But I'm glad to hear that my plan of bringing them home at between 6 and 7 weeks of age, given our current weather, isn't crazy. I'll talk to my coworker about weaning them further away from their heat source prior to the move. Their coop will be very weather/draft resistant. I'm just hoping to get them comfortable before the weather takes a turn for the worse, which can happen at any moment in the fall in the south! But it can also hang around in the "comfy" range forever - last year it was 75 degrees at Christmas!

 

[Blooie]

Lucky you! This was us on October 12, just last week....

Edited to add: It's not going to get warmer as the days go on so I'd get them off the lamp as soon as possible.