No matter where you live – the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere – you most likely have the chance to have the outside temperatures drop to below freezing. Cold weather can affect your chickens negatively although some folks will counter that. Even so, what ways can you protect your flock from the cold?
One way is to insulate your coop. There are a variety of ways to do this. A closed cell foam insulation is highly efficient and cost effective if you can find a free or low cost source of this material. “Where could you possibly get this type of material for free?” you ask. Try going to a site where there is a new building under construction. Find one where they are using this type of insulation or even some other useful type of insulation. Most builders will gladly allow you to take the leftover scraps of insulation for free; by removing these pieces of of the site, you reduce the builder’s cost of disposing their rubbish. [tip = they may let you have their waste wood too; they usually pay for disposal of these materials by the pound or dumpster load. The less there is, the less they have to pay. You will be saving them money] Make sure to cover any insulation which you install with some type of covering like wood or wall board to prevent the chickens from pecking at the insulation. When a coop is well insulated, even the heat produced by your chicken flock could be enough to keep your chickens warm enough in cold snaps.
If you only need a bit of heat for infrequent cold or even freezing temperatures, a safe source of heat without insulating your coop may be an option. If you do have long periods of extremely low freezing temperatures, first insulate, then use a similar source of safe heat.
Sources of heat could range from one or more incandescent light bulbs or some other type of heat producing bulbs, heat tape, and/or various types of radiators or heaters that are not flammable or will not injure or burn your chickens if they come in contact with the heaters.
Another method to retain heat from the sun or other heat sources would be to add some type(s) of mass. This could be in the form of stones, cement, bricks, water, etc. Place these where where the sun or a heater can warm the thermal mass up; then cover the windows or doors at night to retain the heat and allowing the thermal mass to release the stored up heat overnight.
There are many ways to place insulation. If you are building from scratch, you can even place the insulation on the top of the roof with the shingles metal, or tar paper over that to protect the insulation from the weather and the sun. If your coop is older, position the insulation under the ceiling of your coop. Start by sticking it up with construction adhesive and then placing a thinner form of plywood across the insulation to protect it, You could get away with stretching some type of cloth fabric like Tyvec across the joists and fastening it with staples several times on each joist; the Tyvec or other similar synthetic fabrics allow for the transfer of moisture out of the coop. If you used plastic in place of these breathable fabrics, then moisture is going to collect inside the coop and could eventually end up contributing to the formation of mold or mildew growing inside your coop. This would end up being detrimental to your healthy chickens, thereby making them very unhealthy. Also position insulation on the walls and floors where possible.
Remember to insulate the doors of your coop. This is a place that many people do not consider as a place that contributes to the heat lost from a chicken coop. You could approach this in several different ways.
One could be using the same building adhesive to hold a coated closed cell foam insulation right onto the door. Make sure that you seal the edges of it all around with a silicone caulking to prevent water from rain or snow from seeping in between the insulation and the door; this could eventually lead to rot and you would be out the cost of another door.
Another is to build a type of hollow core door where you put some type of insulation in the hollow part of the door. They now make wall and roof panels out of layers of insulation sandwiched between an inner wall or roof covering and an outer covering. These are usually referred to as insulated panels with a variety of finishes on them .
If you are starting to build a new coop, think about using embedded tubing in a concrete pad to radiate the heat from the floor up. This will also prevent your chickens from pecking at your heating system. If the pad is cement, then it will also be easy to wash out the floor of the coop.
Another thing that you can do to protect your chickens from those cold penetrating winds is to plant a row or more of evergreens along the windy side of the coop.
If you do not have any type of a natural wind break, there are a few things that you could do.
One is to put up a type of fence that will actually block the cold winter winds from penetrating into your coop. A wooden [cedar or pressure treated pine or fir] stockade style fence (4 feet, 5 feet, 6 feet, or 8 feet high) or a vinyl privacy fence (6 feet or 8 feet high) is very good for this, and they comes in different heights to accommodate your specific needs. If you are not building the fence from scratch, these usually come a panel which makes your construction time speed up considerably. Just make sure that they are fairly solid panels and not ones with a lot of spacing between the pickets that would allow the air to blow through on windy days.
Another option that is open to you would be to stretch a tarp or other type of cloth panel such as canvas or rip-stop nylon across the area where you need to block the wind. If you have trees nearby, then you could span that space with the cloth and nail it into the trees or if you need more leeway to reach the trees, use rope to connect the tarp between the trees. If you don’t have any trees, then you could dig some post holes and erect some sturdy wooden or metal posts held in place by filling the bottom of the post hole with cement.
If you are so inclined, install a stone wall to fit your criteria. This could be a possibility depending on either your skills or pocket book. Because if you do not build it yourself, this could be an expensive proposition. Here, an option may be to use cement blocks that interlock since you never want to take the chance on having walls like these to fall down.
If your property and design around your chicken coop permits it, you may be able to opt for some type of earth berm to nestle your coop behind to keep it protected from the cold winter winds.
In all of these ‘walls’, remember to plan also for the hot weather so your chickens do not get overheated by you closing off the cooling summer breezes. In the case of the fencing panels, you might design them to be removable for the summer months. This may be another reason to pick the tarp or cloth types that are simply removable in the heat of those hot dog days of summer.
Be careful as you build and/or insulate your coop. Make sure to leave room for ventilation, so there isn’t too much moisture enclosed within your chicken coop. If there is too much moisture, then mold or other fungi could form and make your chickens sick or rot the untreated wooden portions of the coop.
Be sure to cover those open ventilation areas with heavy duty hardware cloth to prevent other critters from getting in and attacking your flock.
Check out your overall coop by even going inside of it and ‘thinking like a chicken’. Look for the areas that may need extra insulation or hardware cloth to make your coop a more secure home for your birds. Sit in the chicken coop on a windy or breezy day to see if you have given your flock enough protection for those blustery months. If you find any of these things, fix them and know that you have a nice secure and snug warm home for your chicken flock.
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