We had no idea how to survive the winter with chickens! We live in the Northeast and knew that we would need to prepare the chickens in order to survive the winter. The New Hampshire breed is cold tolerant so we didn’t need to go crazy with heating or added insulation but we did make some modifications. After a lot of research, here are some of our key changes:

Protecting the run from the elements

To help reduce drafts and rain and snow from entering the run, we covered the front and back sides of the run with clear shower curtain liners. We secured them by punching holes and using zip ties. The liners allow for a greenhouse type effect and despite the entry door not being covered the temperature inside the run is dramatically warmer than outside it. We found even on cold days the chickens would dust bath and lounge in the sun. By also keeping the moisture out, the run stayed dry helping to prevent any frost bite or messy puddles.

Heated Waterer

Providing heated water is an absolute must as soon as the temperatures drop. Without this, there is no way our chickens would have survived without access to fresh water. I describe our full coop and run setup on another page which includes the equipment we included. We ran an extension cord down from the house and plugged in the waterer.

Frequently collecting eggs

Being new to owning chickens, every day we get excited to go see them and check for eggs. However, when there is snow on the ground or it’s raining and cold, visiting the coop isn’t high on the list! We made it a rule that one of us will visit at least once a day to check water and food and to collect the eggs. We tired to get ahead of this as much as we could but after consecutive days in the negative digits we did have some eggs freeze on us. A couple were obviously frozen because the shell had cracked. We ended up thawing them, scrambling the egg, and feeding them back to the chickens for some extra protein.

The importance of a high protein diet

As the daylight hours get shorter and it becomes colder out, chickens require a high protein feed to keep them healthy. Unlike the summer and fall where the chickens would be out free-ranging and eating garden scraps, there is less food to find. Occasionally we give them some extra protein like wet cat food, dinner scraps, or leftover meat. After Thanksgiving dinner, we gave them the turkey carcass and the remnants of the stock pot (cooked vegetables, bones and turkey) which they loved!

Deep litter method

As mentioned in the post of introducing chickens and our setup, we have used the deep litter method for the coop. This is a low-maintenance way to manage the coop bedding by allowing poop and bedding to break down into compost, generating heat and reducing cleaning to semi-annually. As needed we top the bedding with another layer of hemp and some barn lime. We love using hemp as it doesn’t create a lot of dust and can be directly applied to the garden or compost making for great fertilizer.

Molting and reduced laying

We had read that chickens in their first year typically won’t stop laying and won’t molt. This however has not been our experience. In the fall, 3 out of our 4 hens were actively laying. We would get 3 eggs a day. One of our hens, “Red” has never laid. She is 100% a hen, and did start the submissive squat, just much later than the rest.

By the beginning of December, one of the hens, “Purple” stopped laying. We could tell who was doing what as all three hens had their own specific laying location. Blue was left box, green was on top of the box, and purple was on the right. No one had claimed the middle! We figured it as probably just the cold and the lack of daylight. Fast forward to January and she is still not laying. We recently noticed that her feathers around her comb were falling out and become concerned. After some research it seems she is going through a 9 month molt. Apparently this is a very painful experience for chickens.

It’s important to keep track of your chickens and their behavior. Keeping a journal has really helped us and is something we recommend.