Winter Quarters

With an Alberta Clipper and arctic air outbreak predicted for this week we moved the chicken tractor to its permanent winter time quarters last weekend, and just in the nick of time. Starting Monday evening, night time lows for most of the week were in the single digits with deadly wind chills. Gone were the days of simply bringing in the water bucket at night as the nipples quickly froze well before the reservoir when day time temps stayed below freezing. This called for some quick fix engineering (QFE). For a regular chicken coop this is normally not an issue as you can get a wide variety of water heaters designed specifically for poultry wateres. But things are a bit more complicated with chicken tractors.

Luckily I had an old crock-pot insert down in the basement, basically a heavy porcelain dish that would hold about a gallon of water and not tip over when a chicken stands on the rim. For some reason chickens insist on standing on the rim of any dish you put into their pen. Pain-in-the-ass to say the least! Thankfully, the local feed store happened to have a neat solid-state immersion heater by Farm Innovators of Plymouth, Indiana designed specifically to keep bird baths clear in the winter. And it carries a three year warranty to boot! So far it has worked beautifully. No ice on the edges or anything. All I had to do was run a couple of extension cords off the back patio socket. As we get into the depths of winter this will have to do until thngs moderate enough to go back to using the nipple bucket.

Since the tractor will be stationary for several months I added in some straw to help with the mud and ice as the girls quickly chewed off the last of the grass and managed to scratch things up to bare earth. I also rigged up a tarp to help break the wind. Wind chills can be really brutal in our yard coming in from the north and west. So the tarp is tucked under the tractor on the north-east side and rigged with bungees so it can be pulled over to cover the run from snow and ice and easily pulled back over half-way to allow for sun exposure. The hutch enclosure has no special insulation; its only a wind break. But I do go out at night to close the pop door.

Chickens are birds. They have feathers and down. But I really had my doubts about how the girls would survive the weather this week. This Long Horn/Rhode Island Red hybrid has a fairly substantial comb and wattle. But I looked them over very closely today and I don't see any signs of frost bite. And much to my surprise, we continue to receive three to four eggs per day. Truly amazing! Now I know why all of the local Mennonite free-range farmers like to use this breed. We've already passed the shortest photo period of the year. Production has fallen off somewhat as has egg size. But dangerously low temps don't seem to be all that detrimental to egg production at least so far. I had no idea we would be able to maintain this level of egg production through the depths of winter.