Why are people so convinced that chickens need heat?

[Debbie292d]

Still, they might die because they go in shock when they go outside where it is below freezing or however that works.

No, chickens don't go into shock or die. The same people who say that forget that they are the ones saying "chickens are tough."

We heat our coop to 40F. Say the power goes out and it's -10 outside. First of all, it's an insulated coop full of chickens, it's going to drop down but slowly, and second, it'll never get down to -10.

One way they'd go into shock is if you put them outside in subzero temps when you just had them in the house.

 

[Suzz]

It’s the same thing with horses I live in rural Minnesota a lot of people blanket their horses which is completely unnecessary the best coat they could possibly have is the coat nature gave them and once they are blanketed for a certain amount of time they have to stay that way because their coats have been crushed down there are a lot of people who have a hard time accepting animals existed fine without human intervention for a long time

As long as you monitor horses make sure they aren’t shaking are dry and they have plenty of food to eat we have gone to -40 with no horse distress but everybody does things their own way short term blanket wearing is no problem

 

[mefly2]

We raised chickens here in MT when I was a youngster ... provided a coop and kept them dry. Still doing the same after 70 years!

 

[paintedChix]

It's shocking how many people do exactly that though! And then they go on forums and facebook groups to freak out about common things like why are their chickens' feathers falling out... why did their second year hens suddenly stop laying in the fall (cue the poultry feed conspiracies).....

I just had to get off the 3 FB chicken groups the other day. In less than 30
minutes, I saw that one posted 5 times. Invariably the "top" answers were - it's too cold, they stop laying...

I didn't answer any of those. I was late to the party and there were plenty of "correct" answers.

It never fails as well that folks freaking out never list what state or country they are in. Then their FB page doesn't list anything either...

 

[Debbie292d]

I just had to get off the 3 FB chicken groups the other day. In less than 30
minutes, I saw that one posted 5 times. Invariably the "top" answers were - it's too cold, they stop laying...

I didn't answer any of those. I was late to the party and there were plenty of "correct" answers.

It never fails as well that folks freaking out never list what state or country they are in. Then their FB page doesn't list anything either...

There are so many people on Facebook that just live to parrot the same answers, but in reality, they don't even own chickens, or if they actually do, they just assume they're smarter than everyone else. They never consider anyone's climate, breed of chickens, or personal preferences. If someone in Florida wants to heat their coop on the 50F degree days, so it's 60F for their ladies, yeah, we might think that's funny and unnecessary, but heck, it's their preference; leave them alone.

I knew of an old guy that had a wood-burning stove in his coop. In the winter, he would bring his lawn chair and a book, light the furnace and read until the fire burned out, then leave. The coals kept the coop warm the rest of the night. Strange, but that's what he wanted to do for his birds, so be it.

 

[paintedChix]

I grew up in rural Minnesota and now live in Wisconsin, and know a few horse owners in Canada. Blankets are used for nights like tonight and tomorrow when wind chill is going to be -16 and -25 relatively, if the horses were going to be out in that at all. If in their shelters, they take them off. We just kept ours tied in the shelter if it was this bad out.

As to horses - in MT, we put up 4x8 sheets of treated/painted OSB. Usually attached on one or the other side of a fence based on wind directions. No roof. Full winter coats, snow piled up on backs, rumps, Necks. In daylight, at -45 windchills, they'd leave their windbreaks & come up to fence(s) where heated water tanks kept center water w/ a skim of ice & eat their feed. Then, yes, back to stand w/ rumps against the upright windblocks. The blizzards in experienced were usually no longer than 24-48 hours.

In the years my parents had horses & i had ponies, we didn't get a lot of snow except the occasional blizzrd out of Canada (35 miles N) or out of Glacier National Park. The wind breaks worked great!

Seems that area of MT (Toole cty) has had almost 20 yrs of winter drought (no or very little snow pack).

**********
Chickens here in NC. We've had icestorms w/ wind. We loose power more often then we ever did in CO or MT - due to the wind & ice damage (or vehicles flying off roads & taking out power poles). I've struggled w/ ice issues in horse tanks & chicken & duck wateres - most have not been close enough to power sources to use water heaters.

I utilize open air, hooped coops. The one time I had a "true" coop, I was so excited! Didn't check ventilation in the truck topper, turned coop & I lost 10 birds in one night. 5 refused to coop up, so I left the pop door open. Those 5 were "sheeted" w/ ice including dripping from their beaks. Their feathers were smooshed flat & covered in ice as well... The 5 in the coop - no obvious signs, but combs & wattles blackened & bodies frozen solid. There was ice on the ceiling & both inside & outside handcranked tiny windows (they were open as far as the cranks opened) on the truck topper. Some of them were a little older than 2 yrs of age. They'd survived 6 months to 2 years w/ no coops, just loose in our barn & roosting atop stall walls or 16' up in barn rafters, and two moves covering 20 miles, staying for 3 months over crowded in 4 pens on a friends property while we somewhat repaired & cleaned out the pens here...

The barn -




The 1st "coop" & run on our new property, about 2 days before I brought chickens home & 1 week before ice storm.




The chickens i had in my 1 - 8x8, tarped hoop coop & 2 - 8x10 tarped pens, were all just fine.



The hoops weren't up yet, just rusted wire that we threw tarps over.



Chickens, as a whole, are a continual learning experience when it comes to their care... Especially in today's changing weather conditions.

We are in the sandhills of NC - about 46 miles SW of Raleigh right off FT Liberty. We've had chickens since Dec 2011 on 2 different properties.

Edit to change windchill in MT. The one time we experienced -70°F winchill was when we were moving from MT to NC. Spent 5 days in Lewistown, MT w/ 2 trailers in parking lot of brand new Super 8 - 3 Shetland ponies, 2 "pony sized" horse mares & one horse yearling in those 2 trailers. A dog in a doghouse in bed of the 1/4 ton truck bed. We went from windchill of - 70 to over 100° in 1 week. I thought I would die. Our new vet informed us that if we didn't bodyclip the ponies & the dog, they'd die of heatstroke... We clipped them all!!

 

[K0k0shka]

I just had to get off the 3 FB chicken groups the other day. In less than 30
minutes, I saw that one posted 5 times. Invariably the "top" answers were - it's too cold, they stop laying...

I didn't answer any of those. I was late to the party and there were plenty of "correct" answers.

It never fails as well that folks freaking out never list what state or country they are in. Then their FB page doesn't list anything either...

I'm in one single facebook group that's local to my state, so we all have the same climate. I have the group on mute. I just can't anymore. It's the same handful of questions on endless repeat. Which shows that people neither do a general search online before posting, nor a specific search within the group, or else they would've at least covered the basics.

 

[PrettyBirdRocky]

I'm in one single facebook group that's local to my state, so we all have the same climate. I have the group on mute. I just can't anymore. It's the same handful of questions on endless repeat. Which shows that people neither do a general search online before posting, nor a specific search within the group, or else they would've at least covered the basics.

Even when you give advice they don't always take it. Have family that want eggs all year round so they added lights and heat in their coop. They don't have breeds that would be apt to lay year round as I tried to explain. We have lights, but not where the gurls sleep, just in the pen, and mainly so we can see where we're going lol oh well. It hurts my brain so I stopped FB groups lol

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

Fun fact: in 2011, 1/3 of all divorce filings mentioned Facebook.

 

[Debbie292d]

I'm in one single facebook group that's local to my state, so we all have the same climate. I have the group on mute. I just can't anymore. It's the same handful of questions on endless repeat. Which shows that people neither do a general search online before posting, nor a specific search within the group, or else they would've at least covered the basics.

Exactly. For the "what feed" and "should I heat" posts at least, if people would just search they'd find numerous posts to read. Some just are either ignorant and don't know about searching, they know but are lazy, or they just want the attention.

Some of that is "bait posting" too. There are people out there that love to get a rise out of people.