Here, it is customary to make a high roof slope to protect from snow. And the snow constantly slides down, without the need to heat or clean anything there. However, as I understand it, our weather conditions are different - we have relatively weak winds, so the roofs can withstand it quite well. The last hurricane that was able to break the forest here, tearing out the fir trees by the roots, was in 2000, 25 years ago. Well, the roofs of the local houses were either not damaged at all, or were damaged only by fallen trees.
And I will not let animals like goats outside until mid-April or even early May. Because the ground will not thaw before this date and there will be no grass. What is the point of them walking in the mud without grass? I will not let them out. I will let them out only to walk, to stretch their legs. However, for the number of animals I have, I have fairly large barns, they can run around inside quite well, so I can take my time.
And in such weather, my birds walk in relatively large greenhouses. They are already warming up in the spring sun, it is warm and comfortable there.
But I use heating cables only in plumbing, so that my water pipe that goes into the barn to the goats does not freeze. Moreover, there is no heating cable in the room - the pipes go along the ceiling, where it is warmer, and I heat the wood stove, because the wood is free, and you would have to pay for electricity. It's just that my goats eat branches all summer in addition to grass, by winter a huge pile of gnawed dry branches without bark forms, I do not know what to do with them and use them as free firewood for the stove.
One of the neighbors heats the roof of his house with electric cables, but either his house is big or he heats it too much, but he spends so much on electricity that he could buy a whole truckload of hay and grain every month.
That's why we went the other way - we made the roof with a big slope. However, this is fraught with the fact that whole avalanches of snow and ice fall from there every time, and it is impossible to walk in this part of the street.
On topic: it's -7 C here now