How cold is too cold?

[Skinny rooster]

Getting a little cabin fever from staying indoors. Wanted to do a bit of visiting over the holidays but don't want to get stranded. BTW, because I drive far and my last car was ten, I carry a little booster with me. I LOVE that thing, I have used it on the old tractors and helped out friends. It's a great gadget, I bought it at Canadian Tire.

I think I used more wood in three days than all of November.

[KimChick]

I've had to thaw out the water pipes in the barn every day since the freeze started and they are enclosed with that heated cord around them plus a bulb.

It froze with heat trace? Wow, that's cold. Also try a small heater on low/med with a gentle fan to aid the heat trace. That's what my husband had to do in our basement where water pipes were installed up an inside corner of the house.

[Jaye]

We are out every 2 hours switching out waterers. The heated water bottle for the quail was doing a wonderful job, and they were getting the hang of it - until the mercury hit -20C.
I have my favourite old girl Twyla going into a moult. :-( This is bad, and worse than other years because my laundry room is full of miscellaneous poultry stuff in various stages of thawing, so not a lot of room for a dog crate so that Twyla won't freeze. This is not how I envisioned my week off.

[TomK]

Jaye. you are far more industrious than I...i have two sets of waterers..one is indoors thawing and the other is in use and I just swap out morning and afternoon...thats it...they are far more interested in the water in the morning swapout than when I come round early afternoon...crazy how fast it freezes ... :running-chicken:

[Jaye]

Yes, you are right, @TomK : morning waterer is a big hit. I just worry about the quail, since there are only three (not a lot of thermal mass between them), and it's my first winter with them.

[ross]

I leave snow in my pens . Never out of a drink if wanted & I fill waterers up ea morn only .

[baronrenfrew]

Yea for global warming .!!!!

"I prefer the term 'global weirding,' coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, because the rise in average global temperature is going to lead to all sorts of crazy things — from hotter heat spells and droughts in some places, to colder cold spells and more violent storms, more intense flooding, forest fires and species loss in other places."

"The fingerprints of climate change can be traced across 2017, with extreme weather events witnessed around the world; from supercharged storms, hurricanes, floods and heatwaves through to bushfires. 2017 has seen it all."

For more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... me-weather

[TomK]

i agree with Ross...i noticed a while back that the birds eat snow when the waterer is frozen ...seems like a natural solution..my only issue with the birds in this deep chill is that they wont leave the coop...and the amount of is building up fast..and its frozen!!!!!!...gah! :running-chicken:

[Jaye]

I too have a container of snow in both the quail and the chicken runs, but there have been no signs of any of them touching it so far. :-|
My chickens are spending a lot more time in the coop as well (can't blame them), and I've been challenged with one particular accumulation on the board. The same bird sits there every night. The best I can manage is to chip off enough off the as much of the "fresh" top as I can with a metal scraper every morning to keep it from rising to butt level.

[labradors]

Is anyone using heated perches? I was wondering how they would work. I mean, they sound like a great idea as long as they don't get ed on!

Linda