How do you keep your chickens when it gets cold in winter? My wife and I were in town Saturday and while in the post office a person at the next window was picking up a box full of chicks that had been shipped Priority Mail. The chicks were peeping and seemed not to like the process very much.
“How do you keep your chickens when it gets cold in winter?”
I let them have the run of the house in the winter months, Silly! What’s a little chicken poop between friends? LOL! (Just kidding!)
Well, for starters, chickens are birds so they have hollow bones and fluffy feathers which trap air to keep them warm. Down vest, anyone? ;)
I put heat lamps in the chicken coop, and they roost together for body heat. Between the two most times the coop does not get below freezing, though in very cold snaps there has been some frost bite to their combs, but they’re not vain.
I keep the coop lit 24/7 year ‘round to encourage better laying year ‘round, but if you raise hens known for being great producers (Leghorns and my FAVORITE hens, Buff Orppington; close to 300 eggs a year, EACH!) egg production doesn’t suffer much except in the deep darkness up here of February. Also, collect eggs more often, or they’ll freeze and crack if you don’t have reliable ‘setters’ to keep them warm.
The main thing is to keep fresh, unfrozen water available for them, which means a heater, or changing it out a few times a day. Keep the food coming, but I save some money in the winter months and cut back on the laying mash and just feed cracked corn, kitchen scraps and stale bread.
A treat of some greens in the winter months is wonderful for them; you can usually get cabbage or kale cheap from the grocer, or befriend him or her and trade fresh eggs for veggie scraps. A produce department throws away an embarassing amount of chicken-worthy food each day. ;)
I didn’t order chicks this season because I’m at capacity with 50 hens right now. When I do order them (every other year for the past 10) I order from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa, and yes, they come in the mail in a box. I’ve raised over 300 chicks with very few fatalities over the years. :)
I’ll order 50 next April as i’ll need a few by then and BIL wants a few and I’ll sell a few. 50 chicks run about $100 and I’ll easily make that back selling and bartering with them. I raise them in a heated brooder pen in our 3rd floor walk-up attic. They grow amazingly fast, so I get them first week in April and by May 30th they’re all feathered out and ready for the smaller room in the coop. (Don’t put them in with the adult hens right away; BIG trouble, much bloodshed!)
The dogs (and cats!) help with the ‘Baby Chick Chores’ each morning, noon and evening and I’ve never lost a one to a dog or a cat. In fact, the chicks imprint on the Basset Hound something fierce! “Are you my mother?” LOL! He can saunter through the coop and they don’t ruffle a feather.
Hope I didn’t bore you...I can talk about chickens all day long. :)
P.S. Borrow or rent, ‘The Natural History of the Chicken’ DVD. It’s AWESOME and you will want to start raising hens right away.
DVD Description:
“Most people best know the chicken from their dinner plates — whether as thigh, wing or drumstick. Consumers barely pause a moment to consider the bird’s many virtues. Filmmaker Mark Lewis (Cane Toads: An Unnatural History and Rat) expands the frontiers of popular awareness and delightfully reveals that this small, common and seemingly simple animal is as complex and grand as any of Earth’s creatures.”