by Melissa Caughey of Tilly’s Nest
I’m going to come right out and say it. I do not believe that chicken coops should be heated in the winter. There are a number of reasons why I believe this and there are alternative ways to keep the flock comfortable during the chilly days of winter. Today, I’m sharing what I have learned over the years living with chickens in the Northeast.
1. Chickens are not mammals like us, they are birds. Their bodies interpret and adapt to outdoor weather conditions differently than ours.
2. If you purchase chickens that are best suited for your climate, then they should easily be able to adapt. If you live in a cold place, you should keep chickens that are cold hardy and vice versa for warmer places. Think of the wild birds that live just outside your kitchen window during winter. The ones that don’t fly south for the winter.
3. Chickens with larger combs are more prone to frostbite.
4. Frostbite can be curtailed by rubbing Vaseline on the chickens’ wattles and combs, keeping a dry coop, and having proper ventilation.
5. The coop should be ventilated but not drafty. It should also be weather proof. Repair areas with leaks or drafts.
6. Look into the deep litter method, this helps to generate heat naturally.
7. The risk of starting a coop fire is high when adding an artificial heat source. Watch the news. This happens every year and is devastating to families around the country.
8. Straw bales around the coop walls act nicely as insulation. You can also add insulation to your chicken coop when you construct it.
9. If your chickens become accustomed to a warm, heated coop and the power goes out for an extended period of time, you could lose your entire flock due to stress and their sudden need to adapt to colder temperatures.
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| Covering the run with plastic and a flock block help during winter. |
10. Chickens love to peck. They will peck at your electrical wiring.
11. Add a bit more pine shavings to the nesting boxes and coop floor for added insulation.
12. Feed some scratch or cracked corn to your flock about a half an hour prior to sundown. When your chickens go to roost with a full crop, their bodies’ metabolisms naturally generate heat as they digest food.
13. Be sure the roosts are made of wood and when the chickens roost their feathered bodies cover their feet. Cold roosts and cold feet can lead to frostbitten chicken toes.
14. Add windows. Chickens love to roost and nap in a sunny spot during warmer winter days.
I’d love for you to join me on my own personal blog, Tilly’s Nest too, where I post different adventures at least three times per week.
Photo Credits: Tilly’s Nest, all images are copyrighted.
34 Comments
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Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I come from a warm weather area, and now living where it snows. I need all the info I can get, on protecting my animals from the cold.
Thanks again, Victoria
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I loved the article, Melissa! Thanks for encouraging folks to allow their chickens to remain in unheated coops. I read an article written back at the turn of the last century and the writer actually said that an unheated AND fully ventilated coop was the best for his chickens. According to him, the chickens suffered little if any disease because there was no opportunity for stale air to stagnate and congest little chicken lungs. His coops were designed with chicken wire for windows with no glass–sometimes the snow would drift into the coop, but that was of no consequence to the chicken’s health. The trick is to make sure that the space where they roost is not drafty. So the window should be lower than where the perches are located. Last year I left the glass panel off the window of my coop door (the window is about 18″ X 24″) which is covered with 1/2″ heavy wire mesh to keep out the varmints. The straw stayed a lot dryer than other years, I suffered no losses, and the chickens seemed no less happy than if the days were warmer.
Also, I wanted to warn folks that pine needles used in the litter, as suggested, are toxic to chickens. Some chickens, in their infinite curiosity, might actually eat the stuff and clog up their digestive tracks. I lost about 3 chickens over a period of about 6 weeks a couple of years ago before I realized what was killing them. As soon as I cleaned out the coop of the pine needles I had no more problems. That’s a tough lesson to learn.
I’m sorry, I misread the article. It was suggested that pine SHAVINGS be used as litter. I have no experience with pine shavings, but I would have to assume that my ladies would try to eat those also and probably get sick. I still wouldn’t chance it.
These ideas are absolutely brilliant. Chicken coops must be prepared for winter. In this manner, chickens especially hens can be more protected from the coldness of the season. These ideas shared help so much to make a great cold-resistant chicken coop.
-http://www.tuckerscoops.com/
A max-min thermometer in your coop can help you decide if supplemental heat is truly needed. Remember, all the wild birds out in the snow didn’t evolve in the tropics like chickens did.
Well its supposed to be minus 20 F here in a couple days. We just got about 18 inches of snow and we pile that up around the outside of the coop but we HAVE to add heat when the temps drop that low for days on end. We aim to have the coop at a comfortable zero degrees F. We have one light on and another backup on a Thermo Cube that goes on if the first goes out. Has worked for years. Also have duck water in a heated bucket w/ cover that has one small head size opening. Just aim to keep that bucket full for the chickens as well. To hard to keep all the waterers thawed. Yes, we also keep windows open a bit for ventilation. Just have old rugs hung in front of them to stop serious drafts.
Since I live where its super hot (sometimes triple digits) in the summer and really cold in the winter (below zero), I decided to go with a ceramic wall heater hung from the ceiling of the coop, it doesn’t get too hot to touch, and I have the wiring properly insulated and beyond the reach of the girls. To cover the issue of sudden temp drops but to keep the girls relatively comfortable I have a thermostat that turns the ceramic plate on if the temp drops below 35 degrees, and off at 45 degrees. So they don’t freeze, but aren’t too toasty either.
It has worked really well the past couple years, and is pretty inexpensive as well. I do keep a generator on hand, just in case we have a super cold spell and a power outage, but thankfully haven’t needed to resort to that as of yet.
Oy, I am really regretting heating my coop now, but is it too late to change? I am using a red flood bulb in a metal housing with a ceramic base (the same one I used in my brooder last spring). It hangs about 6′ above the coop floor, which is deep litter (aspen), and is plugged into a Thermocube that goes on at 35 degrees and off at 45 degrees. I also have an aquarium heater plugged into the Thermocube, and it is in a suspended nipple waterer in the run (not coop). I am in the Albuquerque foothills, so it gets to teems and single digits often in the winter. Not sure if I can change now! I have 8 birds (three bantam and five standard) and this is their first winter.
I would not change now. Too stressful for the flock. Next year though can be different.
What’s wrong with using the same technique that is used to acclimate young chicks to the outside? That being by reducing the heat from 90 degrees by 5 degrees per week to get to the outside temps? Not saying her coop is 90 deg. of course, but whatever temperature it is, reducing it by 5 degrees a week, or even a degree a day, shouldn’t stress them at all, and would save on the energy bill too. Those weeks go by pretty fast and so will the temperature drop. I have 3 hens in a tractor I built and I know would give it a shot if they were old enough (she only said it was their first winter), at reducing the heat slowly by just moving the light maybe an inch or two farther away every other day or two, or maybe going with a lesser wattage bulb (might have to move it a bit closer initially). Just use common sense, along with a thermometer, and reduce the heat slowly, gradually and patiently. After all, it didn’t stress them going from summer to fall, and if they were kept outside, the temperature changes they would have had to endure would be much more extreme than this.
I’ve been a reader here for a long time and just thought I would offer my 2 cents for once, and by all means, please, correct me if I’m wrong cause I’m still learning too.
We also use a sawed off heated horse bucket that got cracked by an itchy mare to provide water for our free-range hens. They don’t mind the snow and only get locked in the coop when it’s less than 20degF. They do just fine..
We do use a red, 100W bulb in a heat lamp connected to a timer to go on from 4-7AM and 4-10PM. It provides some heat, but more importantly, the extended hours of light keeps them producing eggs all winter at their summer rate.
I had several heated buckets that I use for the horses that had the bales broken off. My husband sawed off the top part of the bucket so that it was about 5 or 6 inches high. The heat element and thermostat are under the bottom. It works great for ten hens. I set it on top of a few cement blocks to keep it up out of the bedding .
We added a solarium to the side of the coop and have all the feed and waterers in there. The walls are made of thick plexiglas and allows lots of light to come in but is weather tight. We just lift the hinged roof to feed and water our little ladies.
Our coop is about 16 inches off the ground and I had always enclosed the bottom of our coop with tarps for winter until this year. This year, we enclosed it with plexiglas panels and made a door on the one side. Now, even on windy cold days our hens can be out of the weather when they are in their yard and they love to run under there and sit in the sunshine. At night, we simply close the door so that it keeps all the cold and wind from underneath the coop. Plexiglas is expensive but it’s permanent, so it’s not wasting our money and panels are easily removed if we wish for summer.
I did a similar thing with used window sashes. I was able to find some that were double pane. The sun heats it and the soil during the day and acts like a cold frame for the chickens.
We have 100 degree + Summers down here. More birds are lost to heat than cold, so need to have breeds adapted to warmer weather. For the occasions when an arctic front drops the temps into the teens and twenties for several days, some sort of heating is needed since these are more susceptible. What would be best for short term heat during these times.
We don’t do anything but close the coop doors in the 20’s but teens I heat at least one waterer. Also if you have a coop you can walk into put the wateres up high-mine are just behind the roosts on little platforms–remember heat rises.
I’m so glad to see this article as I keep telling chicken owners to not heat the coop. One lady did heat hers then seen her electric bill and called me in January and ask if she could discontinue the heat. No!! once you start you are stuck the whole winter. I did tell her about a extension cord that has a temperature thermometer on it. Wasn’t cheap but work for the winter I had to keep a coop warm for immature peacocks. Set it at 40 stayed at 40.
I’m going to have to look around our feed stores and see if I can find one of those flock blocks. That would be very helpful.
You can also make your own quite easily: http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2013/11/flock-block-knock-off-homemade-chicken.html
I have geese and ducks which produce natural heat in the hen house so it keeps the coop like a sauna. The down side to that is moisture. We try to keep the wet birds from playing in the water by putting shallow containers in the coop with holes just big enough for their heads. If we leave the containers open, they dip and splash and can allow the cold air to freeze the water with them in it. This is one of those weeks where Fairbanks, AK is expecting the minus 30 temps, so it’s especially needed to keep everything on the floor level from freezing. The water in the higher cages doesn’t freeze because as we know, heat rises keeping all the chickens nice and warm.
The best thing I found to help contain the water mess from my ducks and geese is to set their water dishes in a child’s plastic sled. It is then easy to pull it outside and dump.It will have some frozen water in it but the plastic releases it so easy.
My largest issue is how to keep their water from freezing.
have you looked into poultry water heaters? they heat water to 33 F.
go to any big box store TSC, rural king, or pet supply store, and look for a heated dog dish. we just set our water on top of the heated dog dish that is also filled with water. it has an internal thermostat so you don’t have to worry about plugging it in and unplugging it.
I have a coop I call the infirmary, It houses the old, the really young, and the sick. I leave the run door open during the day so the birds can come and go as they please, only one a 7year old bird that doesn’t come out
I use deep litter, with straw bales around the coop, and on really cold days throw a blanket over the top during the night, which I then take off when the sun comes back out.
Are the hay bales on the inside or outside of your coop? I guess I can put a tarp over on the outside to keep them a little drier….no room on the inside of the coop….
I’ve seen folks do both.
I fill the bottom of my coops in winter with all of the fallen leaves, sometimes I pick up dozens of bagged leaves from in town. The chickens spend hours scratching through them looking for bits of weeds, seeds, and insects and break the leaves into small pieces. After a couple of days the mixture of chicken litter and leaves goes directly into the garden, don’t need a leaf shredder! I also found a source for bulk peanuts and peanut butter @ $0.20 per pound that I mix with scratch in a small plastic bucket. The chickens love peanut butter.
would like to know where you found peanuts for 20 cents a pound?