Post by eljay on Jan 25, 2020 4:22:35 GMT -5
I’ll begin this by stating that I know that chickens don’t need heat to stay healthy in the winter. I know that if they are dry and out of the wind and have enough to eat that they will be just fine even when we get well below zero. It’s probably because I hate being cold that I do this, but I have been on a campaign to keep my chickens warm pretty much ever since I’ve had them. Up until about five years ago I used heat lamps in the coop. I decided that the risk of fire was more than I wanted to deal with after the bulbs started repeatedly exploding without any explanation. I used an oil filled radiator for a couple of years, and while I had no concerns over that as a fire hazard, it was expensive to run. I like my chickens, but not to the tune of $100 a month to keep them 20* warmer. I’ve come up with four things that separately don’t make much difference, but together have consistently kept the coop temperature 20-25* warmer in the coop. All this is without any heaters or electricity.
Our coop is our old garage. Let’s just say that there was no lack of ventilation in it. Last summer we put on a new roof which closed up a lot of holes. We then proceeded to stuff insulation in all the gaps we could find. We quickly ended up covering all of that with old blankets or carpet, because it turned out that insulation is a favorite food of chickens. We’ll be replacing the carpet and blankets with tin that we have left over from an old shed next summer.
We’ve been using the deep litter method in the coop for years now. Initially I started using this method to keep from having to clean the coop down to the ground on a weekly basis. The unintended consequence is that it provides insulation and a little heat as the chicken manure composts. The base is over a foot deep now, and I’m pretty sure that the ground under the coop has not frozen yet this year.
We turned an old picture window into a passive solar heater. As excited as I was about this when we put it up, it is the least effective part of my chicken coop heating strategy. We are just too cloudy in the winter here, and most of the time the heater has to be kept closed or it can actually make the coop colder. It’s useful about 25% of the time. The sun tends to shine when it’s coldest here, and that’s when the heat is most needed, so I guess it’s okay.
We have three pet goats. They are hands down the biggest babies here. They don’t like rain. They don’t like snow. And for crying out loud, they don’t like it when it’s cold, even though they are fat as ticks and should have no problem handling the cold. This year, instead of putting the oil filled radiator in the coop, we made a pen for the goats in there. Now when they daytime temps are going to be at zero or below for more than a day at a time, the time when I would have turned the radiator on, we move the goats into the chicken coop. Their combined 400 pounds of 100* body heat probably contributes more heat to the coop than the radiator would. The goats are happy, the chickens are warmer, I’m not spending any more money on keeping them that way, so I’m happy too.
A side note: I was initially concerned that the goat urine would overload the bedding and wreck the deep litter process, leaving me with a smelly coop, but so far so good. During the period that they are outside I add lots of unscented clay cat litter and wood pellets to their pen and give things a good turn and it seems to be doing the trick, and I’m spending way less on the extra bedding than I would on running the radiator.
Another side note: with the improvements that we hope to make over the summer I’m thinking that this might make it possible for me to take on calves over the winter which up until now I’ve not wanted to do during the coldest part of the year.
Our coop is our old garage. Let’s just say that there was no lack of ventilation in it. Last summer we put on a new roof which closed up a lot of holes. We then proceeded to stuff insulation in all the gaps we could find. We quickly ended up covering all of that with old blankets or carpet, because it turned out that insulation is a favorite food of chickens. We’ll be replacing the carpet and blankets with tin that we have left over from an old shed next summer.
We’ve been using the deep litter method in the coop for years now. Initially I started using this method to keep from having to clean the coop down to the ground on a weekly basis. The unintended consequence is that it provides insulation and a little heat as the chicken manure composts. The base is over a foot deep now, and I’m pretty sure that the ground under the coop has not frozen yet this year.
We turned an old picture window into a passive solar heater. As excited as I was about this when we put it up, it is the least effective part of my chicken coop heating strategy. We are just too cloudy in the winter here, and most of the time the heater has to be kept closed or it can actually make the coop colder. It’s useful about 25% of the time. The sun tends to shine when it’s coldest here, and that’s when the heat is most needed, so I guess it’s okay.
We have three pet goats. They are hands down the biggest babies here. They don’t like rain. They don’t like snow. And for crying out loud, they don’t like it when it’s cold, even though they are fat as ticks and should have no problem handling the cold. This year, instead of putting the oil filled radiator in the coop, we made a pen for the goats in there. Now when they daytime temps are going to be at zero or below for more than a day at a time, the time when I would have turned the radiator on, we move the goats into the chicken coop. Their combined 400 pounds of 100* body heat probably contributes more heat to the coop than the radiator would. The goats are happy, the chickens are warmer, I’m not spending any more money on keeping them that way, so I’m happy too.
A side note: I was initially concerned that the goat urine would overload the bedding and wreck the deep litter process, leaving me with a smelly coop, but so far so good. During the period that they are outside I add lots of unscented clay cat litter and wood pellets to their pen and give things a good turn and it seems to be doing the trick, and I’m spending way less on the extra bedding than I would on running the radiator.
Another side note: with the improvements that we hope to make over the summer I’m thinking that this might make it possible for me to take on calves over the winter which up until now I’ve not wanted to do during the coldest part of the year.