Winter in the Chicken Coop

It is SOOO COLD

It has been very cold in Alberta this month. They are predicting the coldest Christmas in 40 years. Christmas Lows will be below -30 degrees Celcius. The Daily High temperatures will still be in the -20’s.

Poor Rooster

The Chickens are surviving our recent cold spell, but have sustained some damage to combs and waddles. Our poor light Sussex Rooster got the worst of it. The bits with Frostbite will fall off, and he will have a much smaller comb by spring.

We had put vaseline on his comb, but it was not sufficient to protect him from the -30 nights. I have a cozy coop heater up by the roosts now, to help keep them warm through the rest of the winter.

I love the look of the Light Sussex rooster. We had thought we would try to raise Light Sussex chicks in the spring. It would be good to do our part in maintaining a heritage breed… But, the big combs and waddles do not do well in our winters.

They were really cute as chicks, see New Chicks and the Chicks are growing

Smaller combs are better…

Our Orpington Rooster is fairing much better. He has a tiny bit of frost bite on his waddle. Otherwise he is unscathed. I think we will use him for our chicks in spring.

We also have two Americauna cross roosters, their tiny “rose combs” are much better suited to Alberta weather. They also have lots of beautiful colours in their feathers. We need to decide if we are OK with their smaller size or prefer to breed Orpington chickens and/or crosses. The Orpington is about twice the size of the Americauna.

Hens Still Laying

The Hens are all thriving and from the seven hens that are laying, we are getting 3-4 eggs per day. We have 1 more hen that should start laying soon… We were hoping for 3 more hens, but two of them turned out to be the Americauna cross roosters. So much for blue eggs this year…