Keeping the Chickens and Rabbits Warm in Extreme Cold

 

I'm often asked how we keep our animals warm in the extreme cold.  We only have rabbits and chickens than we keep year round. I covered a lot of this in a previous post here

When we have a good amount of snow, it's getting below freezing a lot and they are staying in the house more than out, and their water is freezing in the house, we close the house day and night, keeping the chickens in  for the rest of winter.  We have two windows that we can open if it gets too warm and leaved cracked for ventilation.

When laying starts to decrease and we are losing a lot of light, we add a regular 100w light during the day for 12 hours of light. When it's -10 or colder, we add a 100w red light during the night to help it stay warm enough without the extra light.  Surprisingly this works well to keep the coop above freezing until around -20, after that we have to put in a heat lamp.  We use the red heat lamp so they don't have 24 hours of light, and continue the regular 100w bulb for 12 hours during the day.  We made that mistake once, and when the cold snap was over, we abruptly went back to the 12 hours of light and they completely quit laying for weeks. 

The rabbits do well with the above plan too, unless we are having a litter.  When we are getting close to having a litter, we put a reptile heater at the bottom of the nest box.  It has a warm to hot temperature controller so I can't say exactly what it's set at, but it's warm to the touch without being hot at all.  This has kept the bunnies nice and warm even during this -30 to -40 degree weather.

Around Our Place

We have a small litter of Flemish Giant bunnies, they are 2 weeks old

Soon I'll make a post about rabbit meat, we aren't sure yet of the cost of raising the rabbits for meat.  This particular litter will probably go up for sale.  Around here Flemish Giant's sell for about $75 each

We have a blanket of snow covering the garden now, enough for my first cross-country ski of the season

Newest Edition to the Homestead - A Flemish Giant

I haven't written about rabbit keeping yet.  We were hoping that rabbit meat could replace some of our dependence on chicken, they have small litters and are much less labor intensive, and maybe even cheaper to raise? In theory we could spread out the breeding and harvesting meat throughout the year, rather than the big push for the summer, also spreading out the cost. We haven't been able to really figure out the cost of keeping them and the cost of raising them for meat. The Flemish Giants are selling for $75 each around here, so potentially they may be sold for profit also.  They are popular meat breeds in Europe, not as much in America, but they seem to be gaining popularity.  I've heard they are less popular because their bone to meat ratio is high, making them cost more to raise.  Some people breed them with New Zealands because it improves the meat to bone ratio.  We had a mixed breed male, we bred with our female Flemish, and had one litter that made it's way into our freezer, but we haven't been able to get them to breed again.  I know, RIGHT? Rabbits that won't breed?  What the heck? So we decided to move on and get another male.  We may still look for a New Zealand female and raise some mixed breed and some pure bred.  We'll see, I haven't really thought it out too much, my husband just informed me we were to pick him up at 6:30 when I got home.   

This is Sandy our 1 year old female Flemish

And this is Hugh, our newest edition a 3 month Flemish Giant

He'd like to say hi and introduce himself

And now he'd like to say goodnight, it's getting late and he wants to explore his cage in the chicken coop