Uh oh.. does this mean my chickens are getting frostbitten?

lupinfarm

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I noticed today a few of the girls have a bit of white around their combs, these girls don't have particularly bright or dark combs anyway, and it's not even that cold inside the coop. With the weather outside at -17 today the coop inside was coming from 0 to -5.

What do you guys think? Should I get me some vaseline and/or a ceramic heat bulb. I just don't want to heat, they're supposed to be a cold hardy cross breed and I don't want to make them wimps by heating the place. The coop is insulated though not massively, is there anything else I can do? Otherwise they're fine, no one has lost toes, no one seems cold. They're all busy and acting as usual.

Thing is, I've never seen frostbite before, and It just looks like they were outside in the cold too long, like when you don't wear mittens and your fingers go red at the ends?
 

lupinfarm

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PamsPride said:
Do you have a picture?
Aww see I knew someone would ask that first ;) Unfortunately I do not, but I'll get one first thing if they'll stand still and not peck the camera. They're not keen on me going out there at night and snapping photos when they're trying to sleep.
 

lupinfarm

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comb.jpg


Hope you can see the comb! ... No one would stand still LOL. I had to get her to do the stomp dance so I could just take a photo!
 

krjwaj

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I worry about our girls, too and it only dips to the 20s here. I am curious to see how people respond. Hope they are OK!!
 

2dream

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I can't tell from the pick. But could be I guess. How many of your chickens look like that? When did you first notice?
 

lupinfarm

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2dream said:
I can't tell from the pick. But could be I guess. How many of your chickens look like that? When did you first notice?
Noticed yesterday. Quite a few are like that. I posted on BYC as well and a lot of people think just dry combs. I got some vaseline this morning and smothered them all (I had to leg band them anyway lol) and now most of their combs are back to flaming red. It doesn't seem to bother them at all, though they're not big fans of vaseline LOL.
 

FarmerChick

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yea I was going to say I don't think that is frostbite either. I think it turns black awful fast like Roos poor chicken did.......

Being in the south I don't have that problem with the cold, but I do have some chickens in winter that have that look.......and nothing came of it. I don't treat individual birds with vaseline, but if when seeing yours, they did look like some of mine and I never had a problem further than that with this.

also paler combs happen right before or after moult also. some say the combs go paler when laying eggs, but then it bounces back up again to bright red. slight dryness will happen in winter type weather.

sounds like yours are doing OK. that is good.
 

lupinfarm

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FarmerChick said:
yea I was going to say I don't think that is frostbite either. I think it turns black awful fast like Roos poor chicken did.......

Being in the south I don't have that problem with the cold, but I do have some chickens in winter that have that look.......and nothing came of it. I don't treat individual birds with vaseline, but if when seeing yours, they did look like some of mine and I never had a problem further than that with this.

also paler combs happen right before or after moult also. some say the combs go paler when laying eggs, but then it bounces back up again to bright red. slight dryness will happen in winter type weather.

sounds like yours are doing OK. that is good.
I think they were just dry lol cause now everyone has flaming red combs again. I finally after about a billion years of putting it off insulated the front door and put up the remaining piece of door stop, and door sweep. The temp in the coop went up like 1 degree! TO +1 WOOT. I've also decided to leave their light on 14hrs a day, they usually get it from 5am-8am then off all day, on at 4pm off at 6pm. But the weather is so chilly out that I'm going to leave it on 6am-7pm to give them a little warmth (it's a 100watt bulb, i'm going to have to lower the wattage on my porch light to 60watt to make up for the wattage on that bulb so that i don't get too crazy with the electric bill) and more light.
 
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