Snow in New Orleans! NEED HELP PLEASE!

[BigBlueHen53]

We had an ice storm (freezing rain, the trees and everything in the world was coated in an inch of ice for days!) followed by 7" of snow, followed by over a week of temps near zero for lows and teens for highs. The difference is, our birds had a chance to acclimate to it gradually, yours didn't. Must have been a shock to their systems for sure! I think you did the right thing getting them into a warm dry place. A hair dryer would get them warm and dry quickly.

 

[mopalia]

When our chicks decided they did not like the cramped coop we had, we wrapped an open structure we had with tarps, That worked fine for a couple of years until we had a fence blow down and built a proper coop with the pickets. So I'd wrap at least some of your open space with a large tarp - I think a long tarp, the width of the tarp being the height of the coop structure.

 

[Dominique King]

Hopefully we'll get some good advice in this thread. I know in the past, I have seen wonderful response from this community in times like this.

Do you have a basement or a garage? Or an available room that you don’t use? You could use a dog house inside with a milk crate with whatever nesting material you use. Or even a large dog crate would work. Have food and water available for you girls as well some electrolyte water to keep em calm. There is a special powder mix that you can get for them. They are carried at a lot of farm supply stores. I have used that powder mix when I had brought a sick chicken inside. and she got scared but after giving her some of the electrolyte powder mix water, she got calmer for some strange reason. And if you can find a heating blanket yoga could place it in a spot that they could huddle against to warm them up. I hope this helps!

 

[Dominique King]

I also live in Northern New England so my chickens are used to the cold!
I hope your girls get better soon!

 

[PennelopeSpeaks]

I live where it snows at least twice every winter, and we have very cold winters (it was 23 this morning) My chickens always seem to well in the snow, though they just spend their time on the roosts/ in the nesting boxes, which are sheltered from the wind. If you want to keep them inside, go for it, but they should be fine outside as well! I usually bring them mildly warm oatmeal to keep them happy and a little warmer

 

[Charlene W]

If you are worried, and since it is only two, you could set them up in a room with tarp or something on the floor until it warms up again.

 

[Mamilo]

Why did your chickens get so wet? It sounds like they were almost hypothermic! I have about 30 chickens and open shed coops, just roofs with 3 sides. I am just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My birds did just fine with no additional building, bedding or anything like that. I did have problems feeding them yesterday evening because the hanging feeders were sitting below the snow level. Some birds handled it okay, some I had to gently force out into the snow. Putting the feed on a sheet of plywood helped a lot. I take a bucket of warm water out there every time I go outside. I have some rubber, fortiflex feed pans that I can beat the ice out of without breaking the pan and this is what I water in when it is below freezing. I am left with 1 issues: What do I do with the frozen-in-shell eggs?

You can cook them and feed them to your chickens!

 

[button_quails]

You should give them dry hay in there indoor inclosure and close the door and maybe add a heat lamp.

 

[FrostRanger]

You should give them dry hay in there indoor inclosure and close the door and maybe add a heat lamp.

Heat lamps are major fire risks. All it takes is one stray feather to get in one and you have a coop fire on your hands. There are safer heating options if one does need to heat their coop (9 times out of 10 though one is better off not heating their coop though)

I think the main issue is how they managed to get wet in the first place. Generally chickens are surprisingly cold hardy as long as they stay dry and can get out of the wind if they need to

We normally don't get snow, but my girls did wonderfully in the snow. The only extra work I had to do was make sure their water didn't freeze over and I had to make sure that there wasn't too much snow piled up on the tarp over their run. Other than that, there weren't any issues