James Gibbon as a first time chicken owner in Montana, it has been interesting to learn how best to care for the chickens during the cold winter months. In Montana, we have already had significant sub zero temperatures and it’s only October. This is really early for us and it has caught us by complete surprise. We were not prepared for the low temperatures and have had to rush to provide comfort, warmth, and water to our chickens. Although there is plenty of information online about how best to do this, we have taken a more trailblazing like approach. This is our experience.

Our first step towards securing the hens for the winter was purchasing a water heater for the coop. We purchased a standard water heater built to work with galvanized waterers. A link to the water 💦 heater we bought - https://www.amazon.com/Farm-Innovators-HP-125-Poultry-125-Watt/dp/B000HHQDPM/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=hen+water+heater&qid=1572373243&sr=8-7

We bought this water heater back in September and unfortunately have had to use it many days and nights since; especially in October. The water heater itself works great; however, if it is not cold, the water tends to heat up too much and can begin to evaporate. Furthermore, when the water is this hot, the chickens 🐓 prefer not to drink it. A solution to this problem was putting a metal dog 🐕 bowl 🍲 between the galvanized waterer and the heater which helps keep the water warm, but not hot to where it begins to be too hot for the chickens. It probably isn’t the best solution out there, but it works for us and our hens are happy 😃 .

Once our water situation was under control, we began to worry about the warmth of our hens. Everything we read online said not to worry about heating up the coop, but as the temperatures got lower we began to get more and more concerned 😟 😳. Heat lamps are a big fire concern, but when there is snow everywhere, it is kind of hard to take this fire concern seriously 😐 - so we bought a heat lamp. We bought our heat lamp at our local farm and ranch supply store, but here is a link to the exact model we bought - https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Clamp-Lamp-Reflector-Guard/dp/B003XV8QOU/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=chicken+heat+lamp&qid=1572374147&sr=8-4.

Once we had the heat lamp we needed to install it in the coop. The only problem was we only had one electrical cord going from the house to the coop and ultimately had to make a decision as to which warming device was more valuable. We installed the heat lamp and decided the water heater was more valuable since it prevents the water from freezing. The nice thing about us installing the heat lamp though, is that we can easily switch the electricity from the waterer to the heat lamp.

Finally, we lined the coop with a mixture of both soft shavings and straw. This gives the hens plenty to move around and nestle into when it gets cold. This coop has been a huge work in progress and I’m sure we will make some more adjustments as the winter progresses. Please feel free to leave a comment below and suggest what we should do next!

Until next time…

-JG