How Cold Is to Cold

OK, it went down to *minus 15F* overnight, and one of our guineas decided to roost up in a tree instead of coming into the coop when it got close to dark. Someone said that all the guineas in the world share the same brain, which explains a lot. Anyway, she was fine this morning and flew down to get her breakfast.

So if you have normally feathered birds (I don't know about frizzles and silkies and all them guys) I'd say stop worrying about cold temps so much, as long as your birds are healthy. Provide shelter of course, but if you have guineas, don't expect them to necessarily be smart enough to take advantage of it.

"Someone said that all the guineas in the world share the same brain..."

I thought that was sheep!

lol

Suppose to get down to 34 below 0 tonight,its 6;45pm and its allready 17 below.

For my money, that qualifies as TOO COLD!!!

Hot cocoa to you!

I Agree!! BBBBRRRRR

Ya, brrrrr! This is really something else. The coldest in 5 years.

green04735, you are waaay up in the frozen north. Wouldn't be surprised if you got that cold. We are supposed to hit -20 or below tonight.

On sheep having only one shared brain....naw, they are much smarter than guineas. Well, my breed is anyway. You can see the little wheels turning in their heads when they look at you.

I sure hope everyone is riding out the cold ok. It's supposed to get to -11 tonight and was just about that cold last night. One of our little fluffy bantams decided to stay in a tree last night. My son and I chased her and chased her, but still couldn't catch her.....thank goodness she made it through the night! I still don't know how!

All my other critters seem to be doing ok, though they are not much liking to have to stay in. I still can't get over how fast the water is freezing! The outside pump froze up again, so I'm hauling 2 five gallon buckets 2x's a day.....but this too shall pass. (soon, I hope)

Good luck to everyone....I'll be crossing my fingers!


Christy

Well I can honestly say that with -14 degrees and that's without windchill is ok with my chickens. They survived the night. Especially since their coup isn't insulated. They have basically been huddling together. Sometime this weekend I will be putting up their window so that they don't go outside as much, they will still go outside, just through the kiddie-corner hole I made a long time ago for one of my chickens. I want them to have daylight, just not the wind. And tonight it's suppose to get even colder.

Woke up to minus 4 this morning. Went out and took care of my chickies-all is well.:-)
Hope everyone else is the same.
I had to go back in the house to warm up a bit then I did the sheep and goats. I know what you mean Christy, my sheep keep eyeballing the door when I'm coming and going! But they have plenty of space inside so in they are staying! I know they can handle the cold but they haven't quite grasped bedtime yet so we've had to herd them up in the evening and drive them into the barn. I 'm not into running on icy snow in 5 degree weather to chase the sheep!!

Jylgaskin, Newport is beautiful however I have an unnatural fear of bridges soooo I don't go over there unless I have to! Just the sight of the Jamestown and Newport bridge signs make make knees knock.

Everyone has their woodstoves going this morning. I took this pic from my office window:
You can see all the smoke from the chimneys.

got to n12 last nite, so i put the heat lamps on in all the coops.

Nice picture Sue. Too bad I couldn't tell you if anyone has woodstoves going around here unless it was a close neighbor. We live too far in the woods to notice.

That can be a blessing though!
If you notice the little redhouse in my prev. posting, it is a rental that my uncle owns. The renters moved down from Vermont so I would have thought they were familiar with driving on snowy and icy roads. They both have light pickup trucks which my Dad mentioned to the husband that he should put weight in the back of the truck so it goes good in the snow. Well, Wednesday night the husband ended up in front of our house because the truck slid all the way down the hill. Asked him if he had weight in the back and he was very irritated in saying no. So my DH and I sat on the tailgate while he easily drove up the hill. Uggggh! They still put no weight in as of yesterday so we ended up having to pay someone to sand the whole driveway so these people wouldn't rack up their trucks and possibly sue us. Very frustrating!

And they are from Vermont? DH have relatives who live in Vermont. Some of them live right next to the Canadian border. They all know you need the right kind of vehicles in ice and snow. That's plain out stupid.

I really just don't get it!

Good morning y'all get down to 33 last night, still only 34 and usually it should be climbing back up by now.. But will be much colder tonight. Down in Miami, Fl it will get down to 56 tonight and those house down there do not have heaters.

Lost the internet yesterday, boy did I miss all the wonderful people on DG.
Get to go catch up.

Harmony, how did your babies do?

Minus 22 last night, and half our pipes are frozen. Hmmpf! Whoever designed the part of the house with the bathrooms decided to run the piping along the outside walls. At least the kitchen sink still works. I have a job interview today, so I guess I'll be washing my hair in the kitchen sink.

good luck with the interview

gallesfarm, do you have heat tape on your pipes? That's what we put on our pipes the first year we started living here. It's bad when I have to call DH at work and tell him that our pipes are froze. He works an hour away. This year we found that as long as we run the water in the bathroom and washer, we are ok. Our water froze in the washer one day. So now we have the dryer vent disconnected from the outer wall. Good luck on getting your pipes unfroze.

N2 here this morning and the chickens were all out wandering around, pecking away...

From what I understand, chickens like the cold better than the hot. Even though my chickens looked like they would love some heat.

Jordan, thanks, it went OK. I am overqualified for the position, which I knew, and they pointed that out to me, but I figure if they really thought that was a problem, they wouldn't have called me in. The types of jobs I'm qualified for don't exist around here within reasonable commuting distance. They are just screening applicants at this point and then are going to bring a subset in for half a day each to see how each person "clicks" with them. So I hope I made the first cut. I'd really enjoy the job. We'll see...

rhodiegirl, we don't have heat tape YET, but we will. The pipes did thaw out by about 10am, first the hot water, then the cold. Once the sun came over the trees, the outdoor temp shot up to above zero which made a big difference.

What you might want to do to prevent them from freezing again is let the water drip over night. This way your pipes won't freeze. Just an idea.

Good luck on the job gallesfarm. Hope they call you in soon.

Yeah, hope it goes well! -missed that bit skimming...

It was 0 here this morning and I'm struggling to keep the poultry waterer from freezing. Even the yard hydrant wasn't working when I went outside, although it will probably be operable again later today. I bought one of those heated waterers which works fairly well, except that it's poorly designed for filling. You have to turn it upside down and fill it through a stoppered hole in the bottom, and then tip it back over, trying to avoid losing too much of the water through the feeder holes in the bottom tray or else you have to do the whole thing all over again. I wonder who thought of that??? Also the plug on the bottom sometimes gets wet and then freezes, making it hard to plug it back into the outdoor extension cord we use. The last couple of nights, when it went down to single digits, I put the waterer into the winery, which DH keeps above freezing, but that's not very convenient even though it's right next to the chickenyard.

We keep the water and food outside the coop, but we have to set up a new chicken house in the spring because ours is dilapidated. Therefore I'm trying to come up with ways around some of the hassles we've been having keeping them fed and watered, and I'm looking for ideas. How do other people keep their water from freezing in the winter?

I just keep giving my chickens warm water during the winter. It not only helps it from freezing too fast, but lets them get warm too. Question for you greenhouse, why don't you leave the feeder and waterer inside the chicken coup? I have a hanging feeder in the coup for my birds and the waterer in there. This way they are both in there.

Rhodiegirl, the geese wouldn't go into the henhouse so I'd still have to feed them outside, and there's really not enough room in the coop for feed and water. We also had a problem this year with the older hens being very aggressive with the younger ones from this spring, and they wouldn't let them eat, so we ended up spreading the feed out in a long curved line on the ground. That way everyone was too busy eating and there weren't just three or four feeders for the older ones to protect. However, I may consider an indoor arrangement for the new coop, but I still don't know what I'd do for the geese. Still, there's gotta be a better way than this!

Leslie

We just bought a base water heater that a galvanized waterer sits on. I fill the waterer with warm water too. So far it's stayed thawed and we've been down as low as 8 below this week.

I just found a base water heater which will apparently work with both plastic and metal waterers and will heat up to five gallons, so I'm going to order that. The 5-gallon galvanized waterer that we have fills the normal way and doesn't need flipping, so that would be a big plus right there. but the poorly-designed heated unit I've got only holds three gallons and having that extra capacity will also make a huge difference. Thanks, Sue. By the way, we used to have Nubians and I think French Alpines, although maybe one was a Saanen. We had sheep, too, but at this point we just have chickens and geese.

I never knew how great the base heaters were. I wish we got one sooner. I would be checking their waterers 2-3 times a day. The heater gives me peace of mind. I still go out at least twice a day but I'm not hauling frozen waterers in the house to unfreeze. I went to the feedstore w/ DH today and he picked up a 5 gallon galvanized waterer(we have been using a three gallon). There are 17 chickens and the duck, aka: the water hog, so this will be even better. He also got me a hanging feeder which I'm not hanging due to the duck. But it holds alot of feed. I was using a 4' long feeder but I think this is going to work out better.

We had Nubians at one time. They are beautiful goats but very, very vocal! And I always admire the French Alpines at the goat shows. Do you miss the goats at all? I went almost 3 years w/out them and missed them like the dickens! Hoping for a couple of kids to be born in May. :-)

I don't miss having to milk twice a day, that's for sure. And our Nubians were definitely noisy, so I don't miss them either. I do miss the sheep and having lamb for our freezer, but bringing water down a frozen driveway in January and February wasn't fun, nor was getting out there to help with the birthing in the middle of the night.

I ordered that base heater and am eagerly awaiting its arrival. It's above freezing right now so I filled the seven-gallon plastic waterer and they can use that for the next few days because it's going to be relatively mild, but I do have to empty it in the late afternoon so it doesn't freeze solid overnight.

We have about forty chickens and four geese; the geese seem to discourage hawks but they're a bit of a pain otherwise. Still, I have some in the freezer and they're very tasty. I feed them all pellets in the morning, around noon I often check for eggs, and in the afternoon I give them some cracked corn, since there's nothing edible left in the pasture where they live. Therefore they need tending three or four times a day, since we also have to go out at dusk to close up the chicken coop. I'm thinking about getting one of those automatic doors that closes at twilight.

That'd be a great time saver. I'm still working on DH on getting geese. I think it may happen....lol! I just love that guy!
We really miss the lamb too so I'm happy about the sheep we got recently. Do you butcher the geese yourself?

I've been wanting geese for a while...haven't known precisely what kind of care they would need beyond what I give my chickens...

Ok, this waterer heater your talking about, where are they sold at? You all are driving me nuts about this. It's only in the teens here so far and we have over 8 inches of snow with more coming down.

Wish I knew Rhodie -Claire posted a cool pic of a ceramic heater somewhere on these coldweather threads -but that was wall mount.

Mcmurray Hatchery catalog that I just got in the mail yesterday had heaters for the water. Not sure if they have them on thier website but I bet they do. :)

The base that I ordered came from Stromberg's - http://www.strombergschickens.com/products/fount_heaters.php
It's the first one listed. It looks like it would work with both plastic and galvanized and heats up to 5 gallons. The 3-gallon heated waterer came from Murray McMurray, ordered from their website, and I posted a negative review about it but it hasn't shown up yet.

We do our own butchering. Geese are a pain to pluck, though; we do have a drum chicken plucker which works really well on chickens. If you get the scalding temperature and timing just right you end up with a perfectly clean carcass after the machine gets through with them - in about two minutes. The plucker does help with geese but the job still has to be finished fairly extensively by hand. The plucker doesn't do much for the larger feathers, like the wings. I probably could just cut the wings off since there's very little meat on them, but they look better whole when I roast them. I also use the meat from cut up carcasses for cassoulets, and after I've roasted a whole one I sometimes make rillettes from what's left on the bird. We like duck, too, but they seem to be more trouble for less payoff than geese; they're just as hard to pluck and there's less meat on them.

Geese don't go inside, so we have to have water and food outside with them. They're excellent watchdogs and I do think that they deter predators. We've only lost one chicken since we put them back with the other poultry, and before that we lost about five of them over a period of time - sometimes to redtails and sometimes to Cooper's hawks.

We got our base heater at Agway and I saw one at another feed store over the weekend.

My neighbor uses a turkey fryer that is filled w/ water not oil and gets the water up to temperature to dip his birds in.

I'd probably cut the wings off too. We've got alot of redtails around here so that'll make a great point to DH!