How to keep chickens warm in winter

Learning how to keep chickens warm in winter was something I learned years ago since we live in Montana that is well known for long, cold winters. There are several easy things you can do to help your chickens and poultry stay a bit warmer in winter. It’s possible to keep chickens warmer in winter without having to spend a lot of time, energy or money.

Helping your chickens to stay warmer in winter will not only result in happier, healthier chickens it is also a key factor in helping your chickens lay more eggs. We wrote about how to naturally encourage egg laying in chickens after one winter where we had to buy eggs when all of our chickens stopped laying for several months.

Once we figured out how to better support our chickens’ health throughout the cold Montana winters, we now have chickens that keep laying eggs through the winter.

Here are our family’s tested methods of keeping our chickens warm and healthy throughout our long, cold Montana winters:

Boost their protein

This is probably the number one easiest thing to do to help your chickens stay warmer during cold weather. As the body processes food, the energy created in the body increases the body temperature and helps the animal to stay warmer. This same concept applies to the other livestock on our homestead too.

Our favorite ways to boost protein are:

Feed a higher protein food

I learned this tip a couple years ago from another local chicken farmer. We gave it a try and it really helped our flock. We normally feed our chickens a feed designed for laying hens that is non-GMO and grown in Montana.

During the coldest winter months, I also buy higher protein feeds that we would normally feed to chickens we are raising for meat. You can find the protein content on the feed bag usually near the list of ingredients.

Feed supplemental protein

When our temperatures are dipping into the single digits and below zero, I also feed supplemental protein to our chickens. I like to go outside later in the afternoon to feed them this additional protein. This helps to give their bodies a little extra body heat throughout the cold night in the coop.

I personally prefer feeding black oil sunflower seeds because they don’t crumble or deteriorate in the snow. If the chickens miss a couple seeds, they won’t deteriorate and the chickens will eat them when they find them another day when the snow starts to melt.

We also fed our chickens these dried meal worms. The chickens loved them, but they are more fragile than the sunflower seeds. This causes the mealworms to break apart easily and get soggy if they lay in the snow more than a few minutes.

If you have extra eggs, you can also cook some up to feed back to your chickens. This is another easy source of increased protein. I bet they’ll love the warm meal!

Provide warm water

We used to use a chicken water heater like this one when we had all our chickens in one big coop years ago. It worked great and kept their water from freezing.

Now that we breed chickens to produce a colorful rainbow of eggs, we have several smaller coops to house each breeding flock. It would get quite expensive for us to use heated waterers now since we have several chicken coops plus a stock tank heater for our horses.

Now each morning when we go outside to open the chicken coops, we take a jug of warm water from the house and pour it into these rubber bowls for each coop. (we use rubber bowls since they don’t crack in the cold like plastic)

When the temperatures are really cold, we also may take warm water out several other times a day on our way to the barn to feed our horses. Our chickens also have been known to drink out of the stock tank with the heated waterer for our horses so they always have options for fresh, non-frozen water.

Feed warm food

I’ve heard of some people cooking their chickens a warm meal everyday. If that’s your preference, go for it! While we love our chickens, we do not pamper them quite that much.

Instead we feed them food scraps everyday from a container we keep next to our kitchen sink. I’ve been known to warm up some of the food scraps/leftovers to feed to the chickens on really cold days.

Supplemental heat

Our chickens are usually out and about free ranging all day during the winter unless the temps are in the single digits or lower. Then all the chickens tend to huddle together in the coop to keep warm.

There are really handy heat mats that can be safely attached to the inside of the coop. Heat mats can provide supplemental warmth to your chickens without the safety concerns of a heat lamp.

In the past we have also used a heat lamp with a red bulb like we use when raising chicks in the brooder in the spring. Heat lamps can be a fire hazard so when I do use one, I make sure it is secured safely and check it several times a day.

Deep litter method for bedding

While the deep litter method is not going to provide a lot of extra warmth, it will naturally create a little extra warmth in the coop so to me it’s worth it.

We’ve been using the deep litter method in our coop for a number of years. (here’s an article on the Chicken Chick explaining the deep litter method if you’re not familiar).

I mentioned in our winter chicken coop cleaning post how we utilize this method because it’s also tricky to clean the coop regularly in winter when everything is frozen.

Weatherize the chicken coop

Having a solid chicken coop with proper ventilation is key for a healthy flock of chickens. Check out our chicken coop buying guide for more tips on selecting the best chicken coop for your flock.

Some people add extra insulation to their coops. We tried this once and the chickens started pecking at the insulation so that was a disaster!

Our current chicken coops are built out of solid, thick wood with no drafts other than the air flow that comes through the door opening. Check the inside of your coop for gaps or small holes where cold air and moisutre can seep through and fill in those gaps.

Choose cold hardy chickens for your flock

There are so many different chicken breeds out there to choose from. If you live in an area with cold weather, it is important to choose chicken breeds that are more cold hardy.

We raise mostly dual purpose breeds of chickens. This means they are heartier birds with more meat on them so they can be raised for eggs or meat production.

They aren’t as meaty as the Cornish Cross, the standard chicken raised for meat birds. But our dual purpose chickens have a little more meat on them to help them stay warmer during cold weather.

What temperature is too cold for chickens?

I don’t know if there is an exact answer for this question because every chicken breed is different. There are so many factors that can influence their ability to withstand the cold.

I can tell you from experience that the coldest temperatures we have ever experienced on our homestead were in the winter of 2024. We had an arctic cold front bring temperatures of -30 F for well over a week.

We practiced all the tips I mentioned above and we didn’t lose a single chicken. That is quite remarkable because it was so bitterly cold I could barely manage being outside for more than 30 minutes while doing animal chores on the homestead!

Can chickens survive winter without heat?

This is a question I hear a lot. From my personal experience, yes it is possible for chickens to survive winter without heat. By practicing the tips I mentioned above, you can help your chickens to naturally increase their body heat and stay warmer during the winter without needing to add supplemental heat.

If you have chickens with large combs, you may have some get a little frost bite on the upper parts of their comb. This will eventually heal itself but may look a little rough for a while. We now strive to raise chickens that have smaller combs since we do live in an area with long, cold winters.

What is the best bedding for a chicken coop in winter?

We’ve used both straw and pine shavings in our chicken coops in winter. Both of these types of bedding are natural materials that work well when using the deep litter method in the coop.

Unlike using sand in the chicken coop, straw and pine shavings will start to compost and break down when using the deep litter method. This can help generate a little natural heat in the coop.

We currently only use pine shavings in our coops. I couldn’t find a source for non-sprayed straw that wasn’t outrageously expensive. This has been working well for our chickens for a number of years.

Our chickens seem pretty happy with it from what we can tell. Although my kids need to freshen up on their How to Speak Chicken skills to find out if that’s still the case!

I hope these tips help you to keep your chickens a bit warmer this winter. If you have any other tips to share on how to keep your chickens warm in winter, please share in the comments below!