Please Be Careful
 

I know some of you are suffering due to unusually cold weather and many are using whatever means available to keep their livestock safe and comfortable.

Often that solution is heat lamps and when used safely and correctly, they are a very useful too but up here in the frozen north, they are frequently known as the cause of barn/coop fires. Please make sure that they are properly and securely suspended in such a way that animals can't knock them down into bedding and extension cords are outdoor cold rated cords.

At this time of year, in the frozen north, we see quite a few barn fires from this and would hate to see someone else suffer the same fate.

There are several fires in our area from Dec. to April because of heat lamps. There must be some other economical ways to keep the young animals warm without such risk... :shrug:

Most people don't have to deal with "young" critters during the winter months (most are born in spring). However, if you have chicks hatching all throughout the year, I would bring them in the house/basement until they are feathered out and can join the "big girl coop".

I don't use heat lamps ever, I just don't trust them. I add more straw to the coop and make sure their water and feed is full. I've never had issues in the years I've raised chickens.

For folks that have the older type shields on their heat lamps...it's easy to take a small square piece of poultry wire and use the 2 wires to thread thread it on...in case a light breaks, it is caught in the poultry wire....saving the hot pieces from starting a fire in the bedding. Works well here.

Chicks stay in the house until they are feathered out. All sheep were chosen in part for cold tolerance and strong lambs. If in doubt, plan your babies around not needing heat.

I have no problem using heat lamps, because I securely attach each one and check it regularly. Not sure what I would do without them.

Premier1 carries an orange-colored, bell-shaped heat lamp which is barn-friendly. Pricey, somewhat, but I am converted. Would never again use the cheapies from the feed store.

I've found that with a few items. A typical floating trough heater is about $50 at our farm supply store and most will go through a few each winter (you can't get a refund when they're embedded in a massive iceberg) but most folks will continue to buy several every winter than go crazy and spend $300 for one that works well.

I watch folks fight to use inefficient equipment because good stuff costs a bit more and even simple tasks become a big deal.

My chickens are fine, I insulated their coop with corrugated cardboard, I figured if homeless people err...sorry, Urban Outdoorsmen is the proper term, use boxes to stay warm it should work for chickens. Besides if they pick at it, it won't hurt them. I also run a heater (750 watt setting) at night when it gets this cold. They seem to be satisfied.

I use hardware cloth to section off part of the chicken house. The feed and the space heater go into the sectioned off area, so that the chickens cannot reach it. I also set the space heater far enough away from the hardware cloth so that the chickens cannot fling bedding onto it, of course!

The space heater rises the temps by 30 degrees. That I enough: not even the combs get frostbitten!

My grandma always had chicks in this early and used a 5 bulb heat lamp. I doubt you'd find anything as well made and secure as her's was. It hung from chains secured by heavy duty hooks in the beam in the middle of the brooder house. She used it for decades and never had a problem.

The problem comes mostly with cheap equipment used improperly. And some older equipment doesn't have the safety features the newer equipment does. We've got a new space heater in the rabbit shed. It wasn't cheap but came with several safety features and a low temp setting. I am sooooo glad I paid extra for it. I know I won't be thrilled when the bill comes but it's easier than thawing water dishes several times a day.

I've never used any heat source because if there's a power outage, the temperature will drop too quickly and they will chill. Acclimation is key, and currently my flock can deal with anything this area sends, provided they don't have any drafts.

My poultry all crammed into a small coop. They stood wing to wing on a couple of perches. Underneath the perches was a bale of straw, pokey end up. The droppings fell onto the straw where they decomposed. This worked well for us. They were brought water, I didn’t worry about freezing water, just replaced it.

That works well for me too but but my climate is typically cold at this time of year but there are folks right now that are rare and extreme cold so it's a bit harder for livestock to adapt that quickly.

Like those poor souls in Kentucky or PA. PA wind chill of -thirty eight. No animals or people or plants are seasoned to that drop...

So true. We had a chicken house burn to the ground one winter night because we had not secured the heat lamp properly. We figured some rasty roosters got into it and knocked the lamp into the bedding. It caught fire and by the time we saw it at 5:00 a.m. it was as good as gone.

What works for me.

Chickens.

Under the roost did a pit say 8 feet deep and a big as your roots.
Put composting materials in there

Build a strong frame cover with hardware cloth.

Done ..birds will fill and add to it.

Heat rises.

Do another pit repeat and frame now put your watering stuff on that France
Done.

Spider/cobwebs that had straw caught in them all around the heat lamps.......above the rabbits in the hay barn... were the cause of the barn burning with all the hay inside.
Really you should keep you animal barns clear of webs period but never allow them around heat lamps.

When I had my 30 Isa Brown wonder hens their hen house was half of a 1952 house trailer. I used one of my metal waterers that the hens couldn't stand on top of and hung a heat lamp over it. I had screwed a 1 X 4 to the ceiling so I had something to anchor it to. It gets cold here and that one lamp, the thin insulation in the trailer walls and the deep litter kept it warm enough in there.
During the coldest nights I hung a second heat lamp.
That was just insurance in case the other one burned out.

Chickens don't need supplemental heat, even up here on the tundra where we have months of below zero temps. Draft-free, but not air tight, good bedding, plenty of feed. I like 1 west and 1 east window - so they can get sun most of the day. I don't even use a water heater anymore for fear of electric in the coop. I just keep a hammer close by and bust ice in a rubber bowl in the morning and give them hot water I carry out in a jug. The chickens look great.

Some city homesteader dimwit burned down a 1/2 million dollar house up here last month because they ran a heater in their 4 hen coop built too close to the house. Whoosh - gone. Those were expensive eggs.

I agree, we also have 3 Pygmy goats, they hate the winter much more than the Chickens, who literally could care less when the wind chill was -10, it is below zero today, they are out and about flipping over leaves.