Getting Your Chickens Ready for Winter

Our chickens are pets and help provide eggs for our family, so unlike meat birds who will all be put into the freezer before the winter hits, our birds will be brought into winter with the intention of continuing egg production. Here are a few things to keep in mind when getting your flock ready for the winter months and how we combat each to prepare for negative temperatures.

Let your chickens continue have access to the outdoors

While I am not one to hang out in the cold or snow, chickens are coated in down and can handle the cold fairly well (as long as you have breeds which are hardy enough). Giving chickens access to the outside world is so important. When outdoors, they are able to continue their own natural behaviors. Chickens are foragers/scavengers so they need to be able to scratch and peck through the ground (even it is a bit frozen). When chickens are able to maintain their own natural behaviors, they are happier which leads to continued egg production and prevents stress and boredom. When chickens do become bored or stressed, they can start self mutilating or become bullies in their own flock.

We make sure that our chickens are opened up every morning which means we also have to go out and open them up. If this sounds completely terrible to you, which it does even to me on really windy days, you can get automatic coop doors which open and close on a timer or with an app. Here is the one I would get if we ever got one.

Have good ventilation in your coop

This one if fairly easy for us to maintain because we keep their door open once it is opened up for the day. We have a bigger door for us to get into the coop, but I’m talking about the smaller door we have for the chickens to come and go. Their little door is enough to get air flowing through the coop during the day.

Our coop is made from an old outhouse which means there are natural cracks and breaks in the wood from it being old. We do our best every year to make sure the walls are patched and lined with tar paper to keep drafts out. The roofline however does have natural ventilation but will not blow directly on to the chickens on those windy days.

Heat your coop at the appropriate times

For most people, you will not need to heat your coop at all. When we lived in Oregon, we never needed to heat our coop. Montana is a whole other ball game though! Last January we saw a day that was -40 degrees and another day with winds of 38 MPH. Even the warmest of coops can drop indoor temps when the weather is like that. We use the overhead heat lamps which hang from the rafters when we see anything less than 0 degrees. This heat lamp does not make it feel like a sauna inside the coop but it takes the edge off and keeps the birds stress free.

We keep our coop safe by hanging the lights freely from a hook in the rafters and make sure to wipe off any dust that accumulates on the lamp cover. making sure to handle the bulbs correctly when changing them out is also another to make sure the lamp can continue to work properly.

Have fresh water available at all times

Fresh water is imperative for chickens to have access to. It helps their body functions and helps them regulate their own body temperature. As you can imagine, this is very important when it comes to staying warm in the winter. Freezing water can be very hard to combat when you have extended periods below zero Fahrenheit. For some, you may need to rotate water containers throughout the day, bringing containers inside to thaw and taking them out filled as they thaw. For us, since we have electricity in our coop, we have this Heated poultry drinker which works so well for us. The completely enclosed water container keeps dust and dirt from getting into their clean drinking water and the warming element keeps it from freezing. It does take a little time for them to get used to the “nipple” feature this drinker has, but if you push it in a couple times while a few chickens are watching, they will start to understand and peck to get their own water.

Gather eggs more regularly

In the cold season, everything freezes, that includes eggs! and like everything liquid that freezes, they expand. What that means is that eggs which are left out to freeze are more likely to have little cracks in them. These cracks can be very apparent or they can be so small they are undetectable at first glance. Both type of crack is bad and can let outside contaminants into the egg which can be harmful to anyone eating them. On our farm, any eggs with a noticeable crack gets fed to our dog. She loves them and can eat them while they are still frozen ensuring no bacteria has had the time to grow. To solve the cracked frozen egg situation, we just make sure to go out a couple times a day to bring them in.

Keep coop moisture free- the “deep litter” method

During the winter, we don’t clean the coop as much and there are a couple of reasons for this. First, who wants to go spend an hour outside for a farm chore when its that cold? Second, most anything outside in the coop will be frozen and therefore unable to be scooped anyway. Third, The way we maintain our coop in the winter time helps keep the moisture levels down which is very important. Every few weeks, as the bottom of the coop fills up with chicken poo, we sprinkle a layer of wood shavings (pine or oak only) and/or straw on top of whatever may be there on the floor. This creates a nice layered and moisture free ground for them to walk on. Come spring time as everything starts to thaw out, everything gets cleaned out and put into our compost pile for the garden once it has had time to break down more.

Supplement with grit

With the ground frozen, chickens are not able to pick up little pebbles for their gizzard to remain healthy. The rocks in their gizzard, also known as grit or gastroliths, act sort of like a grind to break up all the hard grains they eat daily. Without the grit to help them break down their food, chickens can get “bloated” in a way which can lead to death very quickly. We supplement the rocks they would normally pick up with a bag of “grit”. The bagged grit you can get from feed stores are usually crushed oyster shells, granite flakes, or small portions of quartzite. We sprinkle that on the ground for them to continue their pecking nature along with scratch grains even during the winter. The bagged grit will also act as much needed minerals for your chicken. these minerals will help your eggs taste better and your chicken look and act happier- because they are!

Keep the feed container full

This one seems pretty obvious. Everything needs to be able to eat or they will die. While in the summer we don’t always ensure the feeder is full every day, it is not as harsh for them because they are out foraging plants, bugs and yes, even mice like they should be. In the winter however, those plants, bugs and most mice are either dead or hibernating where chickens can’t get access to them. A full feeder is best to ensure your chickens stay hearty enough to make it through the winter. Food is converted into energy and when its cold outside, that means staying warm on the inside. Chickens who eat enough while being happy and healthy will continue to lay eggs in the winter. It wont be as frequent or consistent as they normally do in the rest of the year, but you will usually be able to collect for your own cooking and baking needs. Constant food will also ensure they are getting the nutrients they need to stay healthy during such a stressful time of year. Stressed chickens are more likely to get sick. However, if they are getting the right nutrients from the feed you provide, the chances of them getting sick are smaller.

Not only do my chickens have access to their actual feed, we also provide scratch, dried bugs and table scraps for them in the winter but feed is still the most important to ensure they get the balanced diet they need.

Know that incidents can still happen

Just because you take all of these precautions for your flock know that things can still happen. Two years ago, we set up our flock for the winter and somehow, one of our chickens Paprika got stuck behind the free feeder bucket one night and was unable to get her legs tucked up underneath her. This resulted in frostbite on the bottom half of her legs causing them to falling off (we had brought her in to the house and set her up in warm broody quarantine box to help her heal and watch her progress).She is still with us today, and happy as a clam hobbling around on her little stumps. We have had to make special accommodations for her, but we will talk all about her later. The moral is though, things happen and as long as you are doing your best to provide your flock with the things they need, you are doing great as chicken “tender” even when things don’t always go the way you planned.