Carey and Jennifer on Winterizing Your Flock
We discuss tips to winterize your birds. We live in the south, but we still have to get ready like everyone else!
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Carey: 0:00
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Kerry Blackman, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant, and we're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
Jennifer: 0:24
Carey, winter's coming, even though it says it's 84 degrees here today.
Carey: 0:28
We've already set our clocks back and all that good jazz, but, when I was outside earlier today, I started sweating, so I'm like, is it really winter?
Jennifer: 0:37
We've got our air on.
Carey: 0:40
I haven't turned, I think the heat so far cut on once. It's yeah, but either way, winter's coming.
Jennifer: 0:46
We do, and we have to prep for it. And, we're in the south, so we don't really do a lot of hard prepping.
Carey: 0:55
But,
Jennifer: 0:56
We still seems like we get a week or two or three, I would say three max, of really serious cold that just makes you want to, Not care if you have animals and question all of your life decisions. Are you there?
Carey: 1:14
And with this, in this show, like I've done, I, we've both done some prep for this show. I've talked to my friend Mike up in Alaska. And I've talked to Esther and John in Vermont, and Mandy in Ohio. And you've talked to some folks.
Jennifer: 1:31
I did. I talked to Alexander in Florida and they don't do much down there. A friend in Oregon that I talked to. They, I think it depends on which side of the mountains you're on over there on how much prep you do, but everybody does something a little bit different. So I figured we would just talk about what we do here. And then if you're new to chickens and you can take that and translate it to your location. I don't want to talk about being in Alaska because we're not up there and never been to Alaska. And I don't know that I really care to go to Alaska, honestly.
Carey: 2:08
But I think for him in Alaska he has to use heated waters
Jennifer: 2:14
and
Carey: 2:15
he said that's the vast majority of his energy consumption in the wintertime is the heater for his poultry waters and the water tanks for his other animals as well.
Jennifer: 2:27
I can see that I have a son and that lives in Alaska, actually. They're waiting on a fuel delivery right now.
Carey: 2:36
That could get rough.
Jennifer: 2:38
Yep. So here I'm in middle Tennessee. Some people don't know that, but I'm in middle Tennessee. You're in middle Alabama. So we're not in the mountains. Middle Tennessee is like a. a bowl per se, and I'm on the southern edge of that bowl, so not really flatlands, but not in the mountains either.
Carey: 3:02
Pretty close to flat there though.
Jennifer: 3:04
It is yeah, they have a nice flat property on purpose. But regardless of where you live, you do have to take into account ventilation. I think people want to wrap up their birds, keep them warm, And sometimes that lack of ventilation is going to do a whole lot more damage than the cold will ever do.
Carey: 3:24
Yep.
Jennifer: 3:27
So do you change your feed at all in the wintertime?
Carey: 3:31
So what I do, I use the same, like same mix of feed that I use in the summertime because here we don't really see below 32 for more than a week or so at a time very often because In Alabama, it could be 26 one day and 40 the next, so what I do mine a little different I'll take, and as I'm getting my feed together for that day, I'll take let's say a 50 pound bag of feed and I'll toss in not quite a whole scoop, about eight ounces worth of cracked corn. I'll throw that in with a 50 pound bag and mix it up just to give them a little bit extra corn. Roughly 8%, if you're calculating the math. And that, that corn helps them build up their internal heat that they naturally put off to keep them warm. So if it's below 32, I'll do that. But other than that, I don't change anything about the feed. And, from talking to people up north. and talking to Jeff about feed, that's really what he recommends is doing that if it's going to be below freezing. Not really changing a whole lot.
Jennifer: 4:46
Is the corn and the heat, is that just like us and comfort food and bread and soups and creams and stuff, same concept, the carbs?
Carey: 4:56
That is exactly why. A lot of times people like chili, people think, Oh, you don't eat chili in the wintertime. No, I can eat it in summertime too. But soups are typically a winter food and it's the same. It's the same thing. The carbs inside their body do a carb load and it makes it warmer. So
Jennifer: 5:16
what's their body temperature?
Carey: 5:18
It's
Jennifer: 5:18
a quiz.
Carey: 5:19
I want to say one Oh four, one Oh five. I think it's one Oh
Jennifer: 5:22
eight.
Carey: 5:23
I know it's at least four degrees warmer than ours. But they are, their internal body temp period is hotter. That's why when they do the molt, a lot of people recommend to lower the protein level of the feed to not make their body hotter. Because they're already miserable, especially in Alabama.
Jennifer: 5:46
Yeah, that's they're like having hot flashes during the molt and stripping all their clothes off because they can't get cool enough.
Carey: 5:52
Yeah.
Jennifer: 5:53
In the wintertime, they're putting them all back on and eating the carbs, trying to load it up like a bear fixing a hibernate, right?
Carey: 6:01
Yep, that's it.
Jennifer: 6:02
Yep, so I add cracked corn too. So I feed in the mornings.
Carey: 6:06
And
Jennifer: 6:06
if it's going to be super duper cold, I'll go out about an hour before dark and I'll just give them, I don't measure food like you do, but I'll give them, something to graze on for a little bit and get some corn in their system. What about the coupes? Do you change anything about your coupes?
Carey: 6:24
Depending. Some of my pens that I Have metal around the bottom, like a solid sheet of metal. And those I don't, because if it's really cold and really windy, they'll get down lower and block it, block the wind. But I have found that even when it's in the teens, a lot of my birds, they want to be on the roost pole. They want to have everything flopping in the wind and They don't. Now, I do have some that are made of chain link fence or two by four wire all the way to the ground. And on those, I use something solid like a piece of wood a thick sheet of plastic. If you can find a company that does drink machines. The Lexan out of the front that's, they can't change it anymore or it's not good for them to use in a machine. You can drill some holes in that and Zippy tie it to your stuff and it won't flop around and make a lot of noise. That works really well. The thing about the noise, like I don't like plastic because plastic sheeting, if you don't secure it really well, it's going to flop. It's going to make a lot of racket. The birds get real nervous and anxious and stressed out. And, you're already getting, not getting a whole lot of eggs. And when they get stressed out, you're going to get even less. So I don't really like using that a whole lot.
Jennifer: 7:53
I don't use plastic at all. So my breeder coops, they have a metal around them also. And the roost are lower than the top edge of the metal. Except for the turkeys can look out if they want to. But the chickens they're blocked from the wind, but now my main coop in the back is the whole lean to is the West side of my barn. So that coop gets the full brunt of a windy, rainy,
Carey: 8:24
whatever's
Jennifer: 8:25
coming at it kind of thing. And it's just hardware cloth on with a wing and a prayer, honestly. It's not predator proof at all, but the dogs keep everything out, so I'm not worried about it. But those chickens have been in there. We've been in this property four and a half years now. Same chicken coop. Wind hitting them, even when it was below zero, they were out there. They didn't care. And actually that coop was the only one I didn't have any trouble with. Nobody got sniffles and we got frostbite. Nobody got anything.
Carey: 8:58
I used to say that, freaking, you had to keep them warm. They're like pets and this, that, and the other. And then. A year ago, maybe I saw a picture of Bree's quail, her outdoor quail huts, like the snow was almost as big as it was. It's like she moved the snow out so she could feed them.
Jennifer: 9:18
Yep.
Carey: 9:19
I saw that. No heat, no nothing in there. And I'm like, if quail are cool at negative 40 and they're good. They just need to be out of the wind at negative 40. I'm overly confident that a chicken will be perfectly fine in Alabama. Yeah, even the 0,
Jennifer: 9:36
I don't know that my coop would be sufficient much further north from here. I think if we lived any further north, I would probably put someone break up the 1st year. We were here. I tried tarps. It, they just flap and flop and get tore up and it doesn't matter. I do have sunshades in there for the summertime though, to cool that down because they get the sunset. And that,
Carey: 9:59
yep.
Jennifer: 10:02
So I put sunshades up the heat bothers him more than the cold. So I don't use, I'm looking at our outline and I don't use tarps either. I don't put them anywhere. I don't put it over. If you're new to chickens one of the most common pictures we're going to see here soon will be somebody throwing a tarp over a makeshift coop and then the weight of the snow or the rain will collapse it and squish their chickens. I would highly suggest you're not put tarp tarps up. Any, in any fashion that they can collapse down.
Carey: 10:38
Yeah. Need to have a good frame up underneath it.
Jennifer: 10:42
Yeah. I almost don't think you should put tarps up as a roof, but everybody has to learn. I didn't, when I was first, when I first got turkeys my friend brought me a handful of turkeys that were probably three or four months old, and we put up Hippieville out in the woods and we put turkeys Pallets around trees just while we could put the chain link fence together to keep them in.
Carey: 11:05
And
Jennifer: 11:05
I threw a tarp up over the top of it and went out the next morning after the rain and they had a swimming pool down in the middle and their faces were squished up against the pallets. Like now what? What do we do now? Yeah. So I'm against tarps as roofs. All right. What about light? What do you do in the wintertime different?
Carey: 11:26
So I start a lighting program. Late August, early September. I have come on about like really right after the bolt because I let them go through that process and then I start I like to do 3 30 in the morning, 3 30 in the morning to 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Cause I want to get 16 hours worth of sunlight or some type of light, cause that helps with the reproductive. That makes the rooster more apt to do his job. That makes the hens, that gives them enough of a light cycle to where they, their bodies will lay those eggs out and make that work. Because my favorite time of the year to hatch is in the wintertime. Which is different, but. It's easier to not overheat a brooder in the wintertime than it is in the summertime. So I do that and I like to cut the lights off at five. Yes, that's not a full 16 hours. But it gives you that last couple of hours as natural daylight so they can roost like they normally would. And to me, I think that's really important for that natural progression to happen. A lot of people, another thing people will do is they'll only turn their lights on. If they turn them on at three 30, they'll only do it for a few hours and then let day happen. I leave mine on all day because I like for it to also be constant. Because to me, poultry are a lot like old men. We like things to be the same. We like for it to be constant all the time. We don't like change. So that's why I leave mine on from three 30 to five. It is what it is, but. It works. I get eggs year round.
Jennifer: 13:08
Mine are set to come on at 5 30 in the morning and they go off at nine at night, but that's in the inside of the barn. And that's year round. So nothing really changes for them during the winter. Now one thing I will do is any birds. That I'm going to be using as breeders. I will bring them down. I call them the condos. That's the East lean to on the barn. I have eight pins over there, nine pins over there and I'm actually ordered lights today. Now, I may do what you're talking about and turn those ones on at 3 in the morning. So they get like a natural. Sundown, but being on the east side, they're not going to see the sundown anyway. So I don't know if it really matters.
Carey: 13:57
It's that whole afternoon period when the, when the light starts to naturally progress down, they know, Hey, it's not really light. I need to find my roof spot for the night. Get there and do their thing. The ones that you have in the barn, they're used to it, right? That's their cycle every day I just do that because Jeff said it was less stressful on the birds and that's how I set it up and it works
Jennifer: 14:23
Yeah, I can see that because I have heard them where they you know You're turning lights off and then all of a sudden they're trying to find the roost, And they can't find it because they can't see at night So it makes sense what you're talking about Now, one other note I'd like to bring up here is a lot of people try to save electricity and just turn it on for the four or five hours. Those days, I don't, I'm assuming it's the same everywhere in the United States, but here we get the gloomy days in January, February and March, really. And you can, some days you can't hardly see it. Tell that it's not nighttime. The clouds are so thick. We don't get any daylight through really. And, um, if we're not getting that UV light and the birds are not getting the UV light either. So you've got to get those lights on them.
Carey: 15:15
And let's be honest, everybody's using LEDs now for everything. We're talking about one or two pennies a day for a light bulb.
Jennifer: 15:23
Yeah. And they're not really expensive. I've got eight foot sticks out there of LEDs. And I didn't pay what 10 a stick, maybe one on Amazon. I ordered some rope lighting today. I got a hundred feet for 40. That's what I'm going to put in the condos and they had a 15 percent off coupon. All right. Somebody asked me yesterday if I heated my bar. I do not at peak capacity in March and April. Now, this is my quail barn. I might have their 4, 000 birds in there and that does include grouts and chicks and the breeders and everybody else in there. That's a lot of body heat. And like this past, was it February when it was like two weeks of super duper cold? Yeah. We actually had to open the big doors and cool it back down. Their body heat would heat that barn up.
Carey: 16:18
You got an insulated barn, 3, 000 birds in there. You're gonna need to crack a window and turn the fan on to pull some cool air in.
Jennifer: 16:25
We did. Twice a day we had to go out there. We opened those big doors. I have 14 foot doors and we opened them up just to cool that barn back down. It was getting up in the 80s in there. It was crazy. We did not expect that because we just had that insulated last year, so it's only been like a year and a half ish or so. So that was like a pleasant surprise, actually.
Carey: 16:48
Now, even in the South, we do have times where water buckets freeze up. I'm not going to go buy some electric water buckets for that because they're 70, 80 bucks and it doesn't happen that often. But I will say this I can't remember exactly who told me this idea. They said get a quart jar of honey, whatever kind of honey you can get a quart jar of honey, put it in a bucket. Because in order for the honey has a lot lower freeze point. Than the water does and for the water to freeze it's got to get everything in it that cold so That suggestion was given to me and I was like, okay, i'm gonna try it I also use black buckets two reasons one in the summertime, it's not letting any sunlight in there. So i'm not going to have any algae growth and two When the sun peeps up in the wintertime, they heat up. And it's a lot easier to put in a frozen water bottle in the summertime, when it's going to be really hot, than it is to thaw out a solid bucket of ice.
Jennifer: 18:01
So I use black buckets too, and in the summertime, I move them in the shade. And in the wintertime, move them to the sun. And I had never heard the honey thing. That's new to me. I have heard that you can take an old soda bottle or something and fill it with salt water and it will do the same thing.
Carey: 18:18
I heard that too.
Jennifer: 18:19
Yeah. In my particular case, I just pull all their water. I just dump the buckets upside down at night because they're not drinking when it's dark. Anyway. Or
Carey: 18:30
the bed.
Jennifer: 18:30
Yeah, and you don't want them. We sit down south. We get big combs, big waddles because they got to cool themselves down in the summertime and we have a problem with them getting frostbite on their waddles where they drink out of the bucket. Their waddles get wet. Then they freeze. And I actually had not in 2024, but back in early 2023, I actually had two that just about completely lost their waddles. One of them was a coach and he had still no name at the time. And he looked stupid because his comb froze off and he looked like he had a Mohawk with no points and his waddles froze off. And so we called him Frosty. Krusty is still alive. He throws wonderful babies. A guy named Mike bought him and he loves him.
Carey: 19:24
There we go.
Jennifer: 19:26
So I would pull water buckets at night if it's going to be super duper cold. What you don't want to do I do see a lot of people buy old crock pots. And keep them on low. All that's doing is steaming. And then you're right back to that ventilation problem.
Carey: 19:41
I was going to say, unless you have an open coop and you're doing that, if you put water inside at night, like in a coop or something like that's going to put out a lot of humidity. And that is probably more dangerous to your birds than.
Jennifer: 20:01
Not having them in
Carey: 20:03
water. Because look, I'm going to tell you this. I know people that ship birds as far as Texas to the Philippines. They're not allowed to put water in there. And it's a three day trip no matter how you shake it. A whole banana or half an apple. Put that in the box with them. That's what they get for three days. And they make it. So if your birds go a couple hours without water, if they get thirsty enough, they're going to peck on the ice. But if that's the case, it's been way more than a couple of hours and that's on you. So like she said, dump the water out, fill it back up the next day.
Jennifer: 20:49
All right. Roost bars. Now I preach, preach, preach a nice wide two by four for the chickens. I use two by eights for the turkeys I have used two by sixes, but the idea is they have something substantial to stand on. You don't want to give, you don't want to give a 16 pound bird a one by. To stand on. Do you want to stand on a one by think about it?
Carey: 21:14
That one by is going to become U shaped instead of flat.
Jennifer: 21:19
But the, if you give them something where their toes wrap around and I know people think, oh, they roosted in trees and stuff. Yeah, they did, but they had their choice of branches to choose from. And I guarantee you, they picked the nice wide. limbs close to the trunk. They didn't go all the way out to the edges where it was a half an inch diameter. Because they're going, they're not dumb. They're going to look for comfort. And so when their toes are out, they want to rest their bodies over their toes so they don't get frostbite. You I've preached for years. You can learn so much if you just pull up a bucket and observe your birds And they don't want to wrap their toes around a roost. They want to stand on the roost and sit down on their toes. How about chicks in the winter? I know you like to do chicks in the winter.
Carey: 22:17
Indoors and breeder plates. That, that's what I do in the wintertime. Indoors in my barn so they're out of the wind. And breeder plates. Now I will say some of my show birds like you, I bring them in a barn, I put them in stalls. My barn does have A heater in it, but that heater is set to 50 degrees. Now this is a heater that is permanently mounted in the ceiling. It's a industrial rated heater designed for large buildings like barns and garages. So the chances of it tilting over and causing a fire are going to involve some pretty decent size lag bolts breaking. Should never happen, but I set the thermostat on 50 about chest height and that's it. And other than that, the brooders do their job because if you have brooders and it gets below that inside, they're really not going to keep the birds warm.
Jennifer: 23:22
No, and just make sure your brooder is not on cold concrete, because that cold will seep up through the floor, and the brooder plate is not designed to warm the space, it's designed to warm the chick, but they're resting on that cold floor. Get that brooder Up off of the floor so your room temperature air can get underneath it and keep it at room temperature.
Carey: 23:47
Especially if you're talking about quail, because if you set quail on the ground, even in the summertime, that coolness is going to radiate up and, you'll have quail in there with cold feet. Yeah,
Jennifer: 24:02
just anything you can to get that brooder up off the floor. I had a lady she ordered, I don't know. It's been a few years ago now. She wanted I want to say 250 eggs. I sent her quail eggs and she's way up north and she was brooding them in her basement. She had just stood up two by eights and put shavings on the. Concrete floor in the basement and it was a big space like 10 by 10 And she had three or four brooder plates set up and she's like they just are laying down and not moving And sometimes they're dying and they're just really lethargic and stuff and I said They're cold sit down on the concrete floor And see if that cold doesn't seep into your, the back of your thighs or or your feet even, so always test what you're doing with your own skin and see if you can't figure out what's going on because typically it's something fairly simple. It's not usually something that's really complex. And the last thing on our list here is air quality.
Carey: 25:06
And that's a big thing too. When you're putting up barriers to keep wind out and stuff like that, air quality is going to be a thing.
Jennifer: 25:15
Yeah. Don't build them a coffin because that's what it's going to probably turn into.
Carey: 25:19
Cause they're, from what I have been told in my studying and my research is. You can smell the ammonia. It's already too toxic. And our systems are a lot stronger than a chicken or a turkey or a quail system. To us, if it just stinks, to them, it could be choking them. Ventilation is key, but With the air movement in the ventilation, they need to be able to get out of that stream of air so they don't get too cold.
Jennifer: 25:52
Oh mine get cold.
Carey: 25:54
They're going to get cold regardless. That's why they tuck
Jennifer: 25:57
their head under their wing.
Carey: 25:59
Yep. There's, I have, I can look outside my bathroom windows and see some of my fly pens that I've got some birds in. And last winter, my wife was like, Hey, why, something's wrong with your bird. I said, what do you mean? She said, it's head's gone. And I'm like, whoa, what? And I get up and I go in there and I look out, it's heads under it's wing. She was like, why? Cause underneath that wing is warm and it's cold outside.
Jennifer: 26:32
So those big waddles and those big combs, you do need to put something on them when it's going to be super duper cold. Think people put Vaseline on them, Neosporin on them, something that doesn't freeze, Vicks. Since minor exhibition birds, I just bring them into the barn. A lot of people put their birds in show pens and show boxes and just stack them up. But again, we're in the South. Where those things, are a few nights a year, not, six months of the year. So, we're not built for that down here. We don't even own heavy coats down here. We just layer up sweatshirts down here. All so we go into panic mode when it's going to be down in the 20s or teens at night.
Carey: 27:21
For me, if it's going that cold at night, that's just a good sign to stay inside.
Jennifer: 27:26
Yep. But that also means your birds could get frostbite on their combs and waddles. So keep that in mind. And there's nothing you can do. You can't fix it. You can't do anything for it. You just leave it alone. And it just let nature take its course and let it do its thing. Frosty is going on, what, three years old now with his little Mohawk comb. And he looks I was going to
Carey: 27:51
say, if your bird gets that, you can't fix it. It's, if the feathers mess up, mold will fix that. But. It's not going to fix, but just know that's that it was frostbite and what you breed from that won't have it.
Jennifer: 28:08
Yeah. That's not a sign of his breeding ability. That's a sign of oops. I forgot and didn't bring him in fast enough.
Carey: 28:14
And
Jennifer: 28:15
you can't take him to shows anymore, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't make a fantastic breeder. So, I guess we're ready for winter now. Huh?
Carey: 28:25
We've done a lot of talking about it. I'm off the week of Thanksgiving and yeah, I'm going to finish cleaning out my barn, redoing everything in my barn, getting ready. I've got 12 keep stalls that I'm setting up for the birds. So when it does get down into the teens or whatever, I can bring Houdini and all the other ones with the big combs and waddles in. And yeah, I have running water in my barn now, so I'm going to have to insulate the pipe that goes across the ground. And no, I'm not ready yet, but I know what I need to do.
Jennifer: 29:01
Yeah, it's coming. Fix it now, make it easier then. Alrighty, see you guys next week.
Carey: 29:09
Have a good one. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
