Getting The Ladies Ready For Their First Winter

 

Last week I was able to get outside on a nice cool sunny day and get the coop ready for my new girls very first winter.  I use a deep litter method in my coop which means you keep a deep layer of pine shavings and their droppings in the coop and as long as you keep the inside of the coop nice and dry it will decompose and create its own heat.

 

There are a lot of good benefits to doing the coop this way, the biggest being that there is no odor and I don’t have to clean the coop as often.  I will remove some of the droppings under their roost, but not all of them and then I add another big pile of pine shavings which they will spread out for me just the way they want them.  In the spring once the weather is warmer I will clean out the coop entirely adding the contents to my compost bin.  They get another big pile of pine shavings to spread out and we repeat the process.  I personally do not find that this works as well with straw as I do with pine shavings.

 

In the pen area I give them a full 55 gallon trash can I fill up with mulched leaves when I do my annual Fall cleanup raking leaves.  They will spread them out and pick through them.  This creates a nice layer that will keep down the mud and help break down their droppings while it composts into a soil additive.  Each month during winter I will give them more mulched leaves I have saved for them.  It has the added benefit of entertaining them and keeps them busy.  During the spring and summer I will rake this up and it gets incorporated into the compost bin, my flowerbeds and the raised garden beds to fertilize and amend the soil.  Again keeping the pen area, like the coop, nice and dry is my key to healthy chickens and an odorless process.

 

During freezing temperatures I use ice cream buckets to give them water.  Since they don’t drink as much water in the winter as they do in the summer I find that by swapping out one bucket a day works well most of the time.  During really cold temperatures when it doesn’t get above freezing all day I will do it twice.  Each time I bring the frozen bucket inside at night and allow it to thaw and then it is ready to go back out in the morning to be swapped again.

 

I will give them their regular feed along with the addition of cracked corn or scratch grains that I toss on the ground.  They will need more protein to help them stay warm so I will also give them meal worms, which they love.  I also make them homemade suet cakes by melting beef or pork fat I have saved for them when I cook and I will freeze it for this purpose.  I use a plastic bowl as a mold and after placing a layer of  scratch grains, cracked corn and/or meal worms in the bowl about a half inch thick I pour in enough fat to cover that.  Once the fat has cooled and solidified I can pop it out of the bowl and give it to the girls.  Cool Whip containers are perfect for this.

 

Egg production slows down considerably in the winter and even stops sometimes because of the colder temperatures and fewer daylight hours.  Some people will add lights and heat to their coops, but I choose to allow them to naturally take a break and rejuvenate during this time as they are meant to do.  In the spring, once the temperatures rise again and the daylight hours are longer, they’ll get back to business.  In the meantime my job is to make sure they are healthy, happy and well cared for.  They are definitely loved.