On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 19:01:24 GMT, (Noah Simoneaux)
wrote:

On 13 Aug 2003 17:38:07 GMT, Ignoramus12377
wrote:

In article , Noah Simoneaux wrote:

My wife noticed an interesting thing on a poultry message forum she
frequents. Many of the people who heated their chicken coop had
problems with cold-weather injuries in their birds, while people who
didn't heat theirs had few. The unheated coops were insulated to
varying degrees.

Did it include people in the north of the US?

Yep, there are people from all over the country posting on that forum. That
particular forum is at www.guineafowl.com, and they talk about guineas and other
poultry there.
i

Over the last several years I've been buying old poultry books ranging
from the teens through the middle fifties in that time period when
real scientific research was being done in commercial poultry
production, but before the large confinement operations became the
norm. Free range eggs used to be the commercial norm.

Chicken house construction and cold injuries were at that time
actually a fairly well known phenomena. Chickens are much cold
hardier than people generally give them credit for and are perfectly
capable of coping with even sub-zero weather if you set their house up
properly for them.

The four most important things to do a

Protect the birds from wind and drafts. This can cause drastic heat
loss they won't be able to cope with.

Don't build the house so tight that condensation becomes a problem.
This somewhat conflicts with the first, but it can be done. Chickens
have a higher body temperature than humans and they exhale a *lot* of
moisture. If it doesn't get vented to the outside it's going to tend
to condense inside which can lead to problems and increased cold
injuries.

They need liquid water at all times, preferably not ice-water. This
can be a problem, but there are means of coping. A lot of folks just
take warm water to the hen house several times a day.

If you're not feeding them free choice grains and complete laying
ration be sure to give them a good feeding before they go to roost. A
belly full of food to digest provides much necessary warmth. If it's
really cold and laying is in a slump then try mixing up a wet mash of
ground grains and hot water. The water should be fully absorbed and
the mixture crumbly but still warm. They'll devour it. Eventually
this will plateau out, but it'll get you through a slump.

In really cold locations (Canada and the U.S. border states) choose
birds with rose combs (Wyandottes, Chanticleers, and so on) rather
than birds with single combs (Rocks, Rhodies, Leghorns, etc.) as the
rose combs are less prone to cold injuries. Frost bitten combs and
wattles will blow the bottom out of your egg production until they
heal up.

Here in North Florida most of this stuff is not needed (I do use an
occasional wet mash), but since most of the poultry books of that time
period were written by researchers at universities in the Northern
states it was discussed a lot.

With a bit of patience you can find many of these books for cheap on
EBay.

......Alan.


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