As the temperature begins to drop it’s important that you begin to prepare your chickens for the cold winter months. Your chickens must be protected from the cold in order to stay alive and continue to produce eggs.
Keeping your chickens warm should be a high priority, and there are many things that you can do that will help to increase the warmth in their coop. Insulating the chicken coop and keeping the cold air out of the coop is the first step to preparing your chickens for the winter. This can be done by adding insulation to the walls and the ceiling of the coop, but a cheaper way to do this by putting cardboard, or plywood to the inside of the chicken coop walls and on the ceiling.
The floor of the chicken coop will need to remain open in order for the chicken droppings to stay out of the coop. Insulation will also help cool air stay in during the summer months so you can keep this up all year around. But you don’t to keep the cardboard or plywood up during the hotter months because it will trap the hot air in the chicken coop and it will put your chickens in harms way.
When you are putting up the insulation it’s important that there is proper ventilation. If there is not plenty of ventilation then your chickens health can be in danger due to the humidity that builds up in the coop.
One of the major things that you must be sure of is that your chickens have plenty of water that is not frozen. There are products such as warmers that you can purchase that will help to prevent the water from freezing so you do not need to worry about this. This will depend on what type of winters that you have.
Winters do not need to be as bad as they can potentially be if you are well prepared. And in order to be prepared for anything you must know more about what effects the chickens in a negative way. The bitter cold air that leaks into the chicken coop during the night is a potential danger to their health.
During the winter months daylight gets short, and less sunlight means that the chickens will produce less eggs. If your chickens are used to produce eggs then you will need to add additional lights to off set the reduction of light. Chickens need 14 hours of light each day, so you must keep this in mind when you are setting the lights on a timer or manually turning them on. You can easily run wire to the chicken coop and add a timer to it.
You should learn about the many ways that you can prepare your chickens for the cold months that are ahead of you. As you can see that what you need to do is pretty basic, but there are also certain requirements that you may need for different types of situations such as if you want to lay eggs, or if the area that you live in is extremely cold temperatures.
You can learn a great deal by doing some research on the internet or going to your local bookstore or pet store and purchase a book about raising chickens. This is only going to help you to take better care and better protect your chickens in many different ways other than just during the colder months.
