Step By Step: How To Winterize a Chicken Coop

A step by step how to guide on how to properly prepare your chicken coop for winter to maintain a happy healthy flock.

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As the cold weather is beginning to set in here in Kentucky my husband and I knew we needed to beat the weather and winterize our chicken coop. Our winters haven’t been bad for the past several years but we still get some bitterly cold days with some snow.

Steps to winterize a chicken coop:

Clean out chicken coop:

Before doing anything else you should begin by cleaning out the coop and run. Start by shoveling out all bedding, manure, and old feed. Clean out the nest boxes, feeders, and waterers. When cleaning out the feeders and waterers scrub thoroughly with warm water and soap. This will help to kill any bacteria or parasites. After cleaning out the coop ensure it is dry before adding bedding back in. If it is not dry the bedding can cause mold to grow. We prefer to clean out the coop on a nice day so we can set a fan up to help dry it quicker.

Chicken coop maintenance:

Once you have a clean chicken coop and run to work with this is a great time to check your coop and run for any structural issues. This is also a perfect time to add insulation. You don’t have to have an insulated chicken coop, but your chickens will love you for it. Although we didn’t insulate our chicken coop we did build shutters to put over all of the windows in the coop. On bitterly cold days you want to prevent any and all wind from getting to your chickens. You can also add a heat lamp when temperatures drop.

Bedding:

After the coop and run have been cleaned thoroughly now add fresh bedding. You can use whatever bedding works best for you and your flock. I add about 6 inches of bedding to the floor of the coop, nest boxes, and the entire run. This will help provide warmth for your chickens as well as help to keep them dry during rain and snow. Throughout the winter you will still need to clean the coop and run out regularly.

Boredom:

This is more optional than necessary, but our chickens seem to get super bored on cold days when we have to keep them in the coop. So we added a chicken block for them to scratch and peck at. We feed table scraps to our chickens all year round but especially in the winter. Our chickens free range during the days in the spring, summer, and fall but during the winter they can’t due to the cold temperatures. So we provide table scraps to them to help supplement.

Prepare for freezing waterers:

There are many tricks and hacks for preventing freezing water such as ping pong balls and saltwater in a bottle. We have tried both and haven’t had much luck on the extremely cold days. The best thing we’ve found is to use an electric water heater base. These have to be used with a metal waterer and do require extra precautions but do prevent freezing waterers on extremely cold days.

Those are the steps we took to winterize our chicken coop. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below.