Chicken Care In January

Now here is another thing you have to worry about with the cold and your chicks.  The chickens with the big combs and wattles will get frostbite during the day on their bits if you don’t protect them..  Just in case you don’t know what a comb or a wattle is, the comb is the red thing on their head and the wattle is the red things that hang from their chin. Certain breeds have no comb and most hens if they have wattles are very small.  So, if you live somewhere where it is really cold try to get chickens that, you guessed it, have small combs or no wattles.

Most of my chickens are cold hearty, except for Foghorn, the big guy has a huge comb and wattles that hang down to his you know what… well, not really but you get the idea.  I have been trying to be a good chicken mama by going out periodically at night with a tub of Vaseline to pop him off his roost and lube up his comb and wattle………………………..ummmm, that sounded really weird.

Why Vaseline you ask?  The Vaseline forms a protective barrier between the skin and cold, trapping in the heat helping to prevent frostbite.

Now an update on the lovely ladies.   In winter as the days get shorter a hens body starts to produce fewer eggs.  Mostly because their internal clocks tell them that the chances of survival of offspring would lessen with the cold and shorter days.  Many farmers trick the hens by putting up lights in the hen-house at night, I choose to do the same.  For many reasons, but mostly because it is taxing on the hens health. I don't agree with that! When a hen lays an egg the calcium to form an egg-shell is taken from the hen herself, and nature allowed for the hens to rest through the winter so that they replenish their calcium storage.