This is our first full winter will all the animals. The chickens weren’t out in the coop until this spring/summer and while we brought Molly, our first dairy goat, home in February 2008 we had snow but temperatures weren’t terribly low. With the weather dropping in to the teens over the past week this is how we’ve been managing to keep everyone comfortable:
Chickens
I let the chickens out when the temperature was around freezing on Sunday but they did not show any interest in getting their feet cold. They would actually fly from object to object to avoid the snow even though it was only 3 inches deep or so. They spent most of the day roosting on the potato boxes that are being stored next to the far side of the house. Unbeknown to us at the time we placed them on either side of the dryer vent. The chickens happily roosted on the boxes keeping toasty warm as I do the week’s laundry on Sundays. A few took up playing in the dirt in the front flower bed under the eaves. I’ve kept them indoors the last few days with temperatures in the teens and 20’s as I’m concerned about frost bite since most of our’s are single comb breeds.
Their coop has a radiant heater that normally adds approximately 5 degrees to the internal coop temperature. We’ve sealed up some of the ventilation on the coop to preserve more heat but it’s also leading to more ammonia build up from their waste so we may have to revisit that. We get approximately another 5 degress due to practicing “deep litter”. That essentially means the litter in the coop is allowed to breakdown in place and fresh litter is added on top. As the litter breaks down it generates heat. The chickens had managed to bury their thermometer this fall and it was registering temperatures of 80 to 100 degress in the litter when outside temperatures were in the 60’s.
Since our coop is sized for free range chickens it’s not actually large enough to keep the chickens indoors at all times. We have to be careful about our decisions to do so due to the potential for ammonia build up which will cause respiratory illnesses.
The only other concern for any animal is access to fresh water. Due to the internal coop temperatures that’s only been a problem on the night we got down to 14F. The water in the bottom of their metal waterer froze blocking the rest of the water. Running the waterer in hot water the following morning and refilling with warm water fixed the problem and it hasn’t reoccured, but we haven’t seen temperatures that low again yet.
The chickens always have access to pellet food in their coop which under normal circumstances they eat little of. Additionally during these cold spells I’m giving them scratch grains which are basically chicken junk food. It has the effect of giving them a bit more energy and when sprinkled in the coop, encourages them to turn the bedding.
Goats
As per my previous post, we put coats on the goats. Since then we haven’t seen any evidence that they are suffering from the cold. They are cold hardy animals and will warm each other. They prefer not to be in the elements anyway and will stay in their shelter so they are not affected by the wet or snow. They have room to sleep and relieve themselves in different areas in their shelter and their bed area is protected from drafts by an additional wall/roof. Their hay manager is in the shelter as well, giving them no reason to leave normally. They have a 17 gallon plastic water trough that has been forming a thin layer of ice on it over night on only the coldest nights (generally 20 or below). We break the ice and replace a portion of the water with hot tap water a minimum of twice a day.
The goat “shed” is in a heavily wooded area and located underneath a large old evergreen which appears to have the affect of sheltering them and their yard from strong winds and snow fall as well. This wasn’t entirely intentional, but we’ll take it just the same.
The goats always have free access to hay and minerals/vitamins but we are also giving them some additional grains during the inclement weather. Normally grains are given when milking. We are giving them grains now to get them some more concentrated energy to help them in keeping themselves warm.
