How to bring a chicken back outside during winter?

[belindaschicks]

I had a chicken get attacked by a hawk. She is slowly doing better. My question is it was 60 degrees when she was moved indoors now it's going to be 15 degrees during the day and below zero at night. How do I bring her back outside without killing her. She is also a bantam. Also worried about flock incorporation. She was just finally incorporating in to the flock she is a young chicken and her brothers had to be sent away for being roos leaving her the only bantam among a flock of standards.

 

[Welshies]

Keep her seperated in the coop but within sight of the others. Keep her under a heat lamp.
Raise it each day to slowly climatize her, and after she is climatized you can put her with the resr.
Chickens are hardy. The cold would never kill her. It is -4 degrees where I live during the day, on average. My chickens do fine without a heat lamo as do my 6 week old chicks.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I think any attempts to get her integrated into a flock of standard breeds won't go well. What breed is she?

Getting her back outside will be difficult too, that's a big temperature drop and she hasn't properly acclimated which allows their coat to thicken and for them to get used to colder weather. The only way I would move a bird from inside to outside this time of year is with a heat source, which the bird will probably be dependent on for the rest of the winter.

Hopefully someone who has done such a thing will chime in. I still wouldn't put a single bantam with standards, especially if they aren't her clutch mates.

 

[azygous]

It's going to be harder to integrate her back into the flock than to acclimatize her to cooler temps. You can accomplish both at the same time by letting her go out to the run for day visits during the warmest part of the day in a protected enclosure.

Brief exposures to cool temps, increasing duration will acclimatize her in a few days. It will also reacquaint her to the flock.

However, her size in relation to the standard chickens will be something to keep an eye on since chickens are notorious for noticing any among them that is different and focusing negative attention on the different individual.

Bantams usually do much better in their own separate flock, but some have assertive temperaments and do all right. You'll just have to take a wait and watch approach.

 

[akroberts1085]

I had to bring my RIRS inside because they were soaked to the point of not being able to flap their wings. They have been inside for days. I have an HVAC system installed and they have been inside warm. How do I put them back outside? I don't want to lose them.

 

[Debbie292d]

I had to bring my RIRS inside because they were soaked to the point of not being able to flap their wings. They have been inside for days. I have an HVAC system installed and they have been inside warm. How do I put them back outside? I don't want to lose them.

I don't know what state you are in or what temperature it is outside compared to inside, but for an example, during a cold blast we got about a month ago, temps got brutally below zero and we had 3 three-month old silkies in a temp coop with a cozy coop heater. I felt sorry for them so we brought them in for the week it was so bad. When the temps finally got above 20F, I put them back out there. One at a time I wrapped them in a towel and stood out outside with them for a couple of minutes then slowly unwrapped the towel when I was outside of their hutch so they could go right back into where the heater was. They were nice and warm in there, but they came out into their pen to eat/drink for a few minutes, so there they were exposing themselves to the temp change.