Winter solved! **Updated**

[CATRAY44]

Renigeid, your place looks lovely!

 

[spamanon]

We kept 5 chickens in the garage for 2 months ONCE. Everything in the garage was covered with about a quarter inch of dust. We will not be doing that again.

 

[cajunlizz]

yes , I can just about imagine what keeping chickens of ANY age in the house would be like . NO WAY .

 

[redhen]

i raised all 22 of my chicks in my house untill they were old enough to go outside..(they were about 10 weeks old i think)..it was fine...it WAS alot of daily work....i used actual bird cages with newspaper down and pine shavings over that..and a rabbit hutch when they got a bit bigger..and then when they got bigger yet... my husband made a pen for them down cellar...it had a plywood floor..with vinyl over the wood...with vinyl lattice sides..and a lattice panel on top, so they couldnt fly out...and again..i just covered the floor of the pen with pine shavings..it was fine....it will stink if its not cleaned out frequently so you will have to be diligent on that...but..if i didnt have 22 adults right now..and had only 3..i'd do it for the winter...it shouldent smell if its kept very clean....it was expensive for us though..because of all the pine shavigns we went through...but good luck!..Wendy

 

[Chickenaddict]

Quote:
Sorry to get off topic a bit but where do you get your DE in minneapolis, I have been looking allll over for it and had no luck. I ended up ordering 2 lbs online and with shipping it was like $26

 

[cajunlizz]

Sorry , BUT pine shavings work for me . No poop odor , no flies , nothing . and I have never had to use DE neither and I have over 100 head in the flock . but I do have plenty of ventilation and i never put food or water inside the coop . I am sure tho , that might have to change if we get a cold wet winter as predicted . They always have full access to go in or out from the coop to the attached run .

 

[mamaKate]

On the subject of house chickens: my sisters kids babysat their classroom chick and then became too attatched to let it be sent back to the farm. Their dad built a large cage in the playroom. With careful cleanups and lots of out of the cage playtime,

the bird lived out it's natural life with no ill effects to anybody.

 

[EliteTempleton]

Update:

My busy life has kept me away from here for a while. I meant to update this post earlier.

Here is what I have learned/been through since I posted my idea here.

In July or August here we had a Tornado warning.
So I figured I should grab my chickens and have them in the basement due to the weather. From this I learned a few things:
1st) It is very difficult to round up chickens in the rain and get them all into one dog kennel with any kind of quickness, had the tornado actually come through my area I think I would have been injured or killed due to the amount of time it took me and my wife to get them rounded up and into the one large kennel, and then transporting them. For emergency transport of chickens I recommend the small(basically cat sized) kennel's. One for each of them. This way you can simply grab them one at a time, put them in a cage and move onto the next one. They are relatively cheap ($20), stackable, etc. This way you can grab multiple cages and get to your shelter. If it is an evacuation scenario they are also easily managed until you get to your destination. I've considered one of those wire cage kennels that fold down fairly easily and well, yet are sturdy when setup, with a wire floor. This way you could set the kennel on a patch of grass/bugs and let the chicken/s safely stretch out and such while you were stopped for a lunch break or enroute to your final evacuation location. Though I would add landscape cloth to keep the chickens heads inside of the kennel and avoid the sight movement exciting predators(including dogs visiting the same rest stop).
2nd) Indeed they were smelly and noisy very quickly. They did stay the night down there, but were quickly moved outside in the AM. So if someone were to keep them in the house I'd certainly recommend a room built for them with sound proofing, an Air Purifier, and probably the peat moss too.

I think the amount of time cleaning would not be worth the trade off for not having to go outside to get the eggs.

I do not have the funds for a sound proof & air purified room in my basement so here is what I've done:

I have a chick-n-hutch & chick-n-run combo. I began modifying it the same day I put it together and it still continues. For the money I spent I have to say I wish I had just built one from scratch or maybe the playhouse idea, but I do like that I can move them around the yard, pen and all, easily. I did alot of little modifications but for the summer the main add on was an extension for the run, I made an extension that added about 6' to the run and just slid over top of the chick-n-run part. That worked great for the summer, my Wife and I moved them around to tall grass every weekend.

Now that winter is approaching the modifications have begun in full tilt again. The simple one was replacing the roosting bar/stick with a 2x4.
Next I bought a reptile heater pad and secured it to the bottom of the nesting box. This was a waste of my $, it keeps the nesting box 1.7F above ambient temp(big deal). I keep it plugged in because it can't hurt, but I would not do it again if I could go back in time. Maybe I bought the wrong kind, don't know. The directions said it was designed to be used on glass, they did not lie because it does not work well on wood at all.
Next I cut boards(recycled plywood) to cover the sides. Then one for the front, which I cut an 8wx12h hole in for them to move in and out of their newly enclosed coop. They have to squat down anyway to get under the 2x4 so I probably should have made it 8x10 or maybe less.
Then I bought a 100 bulb string of incandescent Christmas lights, removed the poop tray, and stapled the lights up where the tray was, making sure they were low enough to be out of pecking range. I put the lights on a timer, and they come on at 4am so that they get the heat from the lights during the coldest part of the day, and ensure they get 14 hours of daylight.
We placed the coop/run against the side of the garage, then bought bails of straw and stacked them around the sides to block the wind and give them some heat retention.
Next I will build a simple roof frame out of some 2x4's I have laying around to go over the run area and I will staple a tarp to it, the ends will be open so fresh air circulates in, but it will keep out most of the snow and harsh winds.
I will use the run area as something of a winter compost pile, I'll add pine shavings as needed, but will also toss the compost bucket contents in. Let them eat what they want and leave the rest to compost(adding heat and putting them to work stirring the compost throughout the winter). Soon I will mow and rake the yard and give them all of that pile for a start, plus this years garden waste's.
Oh, I also bought one of the plug in waterers, so the water does not freeze.

Hopefully I did not forget anything...

 

[bkbuz1987]

Be careful with the compost idee, spoiled food will kill your chickens. I lost one to that already.

 

[Malbri]

Havent read the whole thing- but I have kept a hen through the winter in the basement(just one) but I also have 5 banties in the garage right now. The smell does build up quickly with the banties, because they are five in a xl dog crate during the day, but the area we had for the one was 4x8 and we never had to clean it in the couple months she lived there and the smell was barely noticable