what do you all do to keep your birds from being too bored all winter?what do you feed for treats?

[MaPa26]

To Chickencame1st: Sounds (and looks) like your chickens had a great party to end the year with! I think I'll give my girls some peas tonight with their scratch. It's just about that time. And we had another cold front move in, today, so they need their evening scratch treat!

 

[LilBiddies]

Someone said hang it high so they choke themselves? This probably isnt any help but im new to this and i am wondering what to do whrn we get chickens.

 

[LilBiddies]

We get a couple feet of snow here in AB so we wouldn't be able to dig a path for the chickens to have greens. Maybe i should try in the fall to gather the cut up grass from our lawn and maybe they will eat that in the winter.

 

[LilBiddies]

- 20 is pretty darned cold, that's true. Not that cold here, but it is in the low teens to 20's with a serious windchill during the day, and single digits at night. I should amend to say that when it's THIS cold, we have two heatlights in the barn that we do turn on the morning for them to warm up under after the cold night, when we are home and can go out several times to monitor them. Even then it's risky though, and heatlights can give off toxic vapors sometimes. Good insulation, with a regular lightbulb, is better. But lots of people don't use heatlights at all and their flocks are fine.

To us around -20 is warm, we often get close to -35 or -40

 

[KayTee]

We get a couple feet of snow here in AB so we wouldn't be able to dig a path for the chickens to have greens. Maybe i should try in the fall to gather the cut up grass from our lawn and maybe they will eat that in the winter.

That works for cattle, but it's not such a good idea for chickens. Hay (dried grass) is not advised as a bedding material, because the chickens may try to eat it, and it's not as easy to digest as fresh grass, so it can balll up and cause an impacted crop. Straw (dried wheat stalks) is ok for bedding because it's larger, and they won't try to eat it.

For fresh greens in the winter you could try sprouting seeds. I tried it once - it's do-able on a small scale, but I only had 3 chickens at the time. I wouldn't want to do it for a large flock. If you're interested, try this link:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/713334/growing-fodder-for-chickens

Oh, and by the way,

 

[Deepwoodchick]

To keep my chickens from boredom, I have created an area in their pen in which I keep clean hay. Then, each day, I create a mixture of seeds and mealworms, toss it on the hay, and watch them happily scratch for hours. I only have six hens per pen, so they don't "fight" for the yummies. By the way, they self-selected who lives peacefully with whom!

 

[Naturegirl44]

I hung a mealworm suet in a suet feeder and they didn't really touch it. I think the swinging freaked them out so I removed it and screwed it to the wall. I can hear them pecking at now lol its getting smaller and smaller!! I have a feeling anything hanging will not go over well with my girls and everything freezes pretty quick here up north so i'll wait til spring to try a tether idea in the run and see how it goes over with them.

I am going to try to plastic pop bottle filled with scratch idea. We have a chicken ball that has little holes for the scratch to come out when they roll it around but I find that the ball opens and just dumps all the scratch in a pile so I think the plastic pop bottle will work better.

In the front part of our coop, I add new straw and throw black oil sunflower seeds in it to keep them busy. I am going to buy frozen mealworms on Monday to add to this activity!!

I am worried about the humidity though. The inside of the windows has frosted over. We covered a lot of the vent holes with carpet but there are still 2 open to the outside for ventilation. Maybe I should open a few more?? we also have a small heater that isn't really doing anything!! I can hold my hands to it for a long time and not get burned or too hot so I think its ok for the chickens. I have seen them gather around it in the -32c lately. You can see it hanging in one of the pictures below. we put it right beside the water to hopefully help with the freezing water but it doesn't seem to do much in that department either. lol so I change there bucket 2-3 times day right now while this deep freeze is going on.

Thanks all the idea's in this thread. I have been trying to come up with idea's on how to keep the girls active over the winter. I will google the flock block idea as well.


You can see the little heater hanging from the ceiling beside the water cooler. This is the front section where I throw fresh straw and sunflowers seeds.


after a week of -32c, it is only -6c today and I coaxed them outside with fresh straw and sunflower seeds.


The mealworm suet attached to the wall.

As you can see, our coop is not insulated but we have put straw bales around the outside for extra insulation in this very cold winter. so far no signs of frost bite on any of them.

 

[granthamkk]

I have seen several posts, on different sites,about feeding oatmeal to help them stay warm and have a few questions. First, we had someone move and give us three large bags of all natural 100% oat bran. Can they eat that!? Do I make it like a hot cereal?

They are welsusmmers, if that makes a difference. And we live in Texas, so cold for us is about 30 degrees.

 

[MaPa26]

I have seen several posts, on different sites,about feeding oatmeal to help them stay warm and have a few questions. First, we had someone move and give us three large bags of all natural 100% oat bran. Can they eat that!? Do I make it like a hot cereal?

They are welsusmmers, if that makes a difference. And we live in Texas, so cold for us is about 30 degrees.

At the top of the BYC page, there is a "search" feature. I entered "oat bran" and found this thread on the subject, for you: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/93392/oat-bran-ok-please-help

 

[gilcamp4]

At the top of the BYC page, there is a "search" feature. I entered "oat bran" and found this thread on the subject, for you: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/93392/oat-bran-ok-please-help

i have a rabbit when we got her the man gave me a bag of feed for her said its a treat once a week turns out to be a wheat seed that they give horses and the chickens would stich thier head in the fence to get it, i also have a wheat bran which the rabbit eat in the winter. found chickens eating that to so in the winter i mix the 2 together with the laying pellits and it has worked great the bran helps with warm in the winter, of course they get crashed corn at 3:30 everyday, today i sent out apples and egg shells hubby puts shells in the feed with grind and it works good, we have 29 hens and 2 roosters, get 21 eggs a day waiting for the day we get 29, daughter came to visit and sent her home with 9 doz eggs to give out to family,