This past week winter storm Avery ascended onto our area and knocked out power for almost 6 full days. My chicken farm was without power from Thursday night till Wednesday afternoon. Even though it started with freezing rain, had several days or snow and sleet and barely got above freezing the whole week....my chickens did just fine throughout out the entire winter storm.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy! Just when we thought the weather was warming up it started to rain which quickly coated the chicken coops in a new layer of ice. The trees that hadn't lost their leaves yet cracked and fell under the weight. The chickens were unfazed by this severe weather though as thankfully, we were well prepared!
Although my preps and a few tricks during the storm definitely helped the chickens to survive and even thrive during this extreme winter weather, most of the credit goes to one main practice I always follow.
I don't heat the chicken coop
If I had used heat lights or heat panels in my coops, my chickens would have been used to the warmer temperatures and the sudden drop in temperature would have been very hard for them to handle. Since they had become acclimated to the cold weather gradually as the season changed, they didn't even notice when the electric to their coop went out. Of course I noticed the power outage because fresh (liquid) water became a bit of an issue, but the temperature did not faze the chickens in the least.
Here are the other tricks the chickens and I used to get through the winter storm and power outage.
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Chicken keeping in extreme winter weather. Surviving power outages and ice storms.was originally posted by Favorite Chicken Blogs
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