Stop Heating Your Chicken Coop. How My Family Kept Hens Alive at 40 Below

The coldest morning of my boyhood, the thermometer on our barn read forty below zero. I was sure every hen we owned would be dead on the roost. Instead, all twenty-six came down fluffed up, healthy and complaining that breakfast was late. We never had a heater in that henhouse. Not once. In this one I tell you why my family never heated our chicken coop, and exactly how my grandfather kept our hens alive and laying through Minnesota winters at forty below: where he built the henhouse, why he left it open up high under the roof, the difference between ventilation and a draft, the frost on the ceiling that tells you something is wrong, the wide flat roost that keeps their feet warm, the deep straw floor, and the cracked corn at dusk that works like a little stove inside every hen. I also tell you honestly when heat really is needed, and what is safer than a heat lamp. The part most videos leave out: cold is not what kills hens or freezes combs. Damp air is. This is Lars Haugen. Old ways from a Norwegian farm family on the Minnesota prairie. ⚠ Never use heat lamps, candles, lanterns, kerosene heaters or any open flame in a henhouse. Dry bedding, dust and feathers catch fire in minutes, and fuel heaters make fumes. Baby chicks, sick hens and poorly feathered birds are different: they may need safe, solidly mounted heat made for coops. 🔔 More old farm ways every week. Next time: how my grandmother kept eggs good for nine months without a refrigerator. #backyardchickens #chickens #chickencoop #homesteading #winterchickens #chickenkeeping #offgrid #nopower #homestead #oldways #selfsufficient #farmlife #minnesota