Heating A chicken coop.

[patandchickens]

Some simpler ways of keeping chickens warmer include:

--insulate the coop, including the ceiling

--make CERTAIN there are no drafts (ventilation near the top of the walls, not next to the roost though, is GOOD; drafts, even small ones, blowing on the chickens are Bad)

--enlarge the south-facing windows so you get more heat gain during the day; if heat loss at night is an issue, draw translucent curtains at sunset, or put bubblewrap over the windowglass for a bit of extra insulation

--pop-can solar heater, in the broad sense anyhow

--insulated hover over the roost, or

--temporary partition in the coop to create a 'coop within the coop'


A couple other measures to reduce the likelihood of frostbite, dunno if you're already doing these things, include:

--make CERTAIN the air is really dry, this may mean opening up more ventilation of your coop is on the airtight side, it may also mean putting in more dry bedding and/or using a droppings board under the roost that you scrape off (remove poo from coop) every morning (that alone can remove a LOT of humidity from coop)

--make sure there are no drafts at all on roosting birds

--make sure you're providing plenty of free-choice food, as they require more food to keep warm in colder tempeatures

--massage vaseline onto the comb every few days during really cold weather (easiest to do at night when they're on the roost).

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Green Diesel]

Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking you could integrate the compost pile or manure pile (or even chicken poop) that generates heat; with a solar air heater that uses convection to circulate air. this would keep heated air circulating constantly and would have no requirement for power or solar...therefore it would work at night as well . It would be a pretty simple build too.

...Great, now you have me thinking about this and I won't sleep tonight because I'll be thinking about building this to heat my chicken coup!