Are Guinea fowl cold hardy?

I get asked all the time how my guineas and chickens handle the cold and snow we get every winter. Guineas are quite a bit different then chickens. For one thing, they are nowhere near as smart. I know it's hard to believe, after all I'm sure we've all seen chickens do some dumb things. Trust me when I tell you, Guineas are not the sharpest tool in the shed! 

They can be trained to a point though. They'll come running when I call them, and they get the general idea behind herding. One sticking point with Guineas though is sleeping in the trees. This isn't a problem in normal weather. Sometimes in the summer every single free ranging Guinea sleeps in the trees! They get an early start to tick eating every morning so I don't mind. 

Even in cooler weather it's not really a problem. For warm climate birds they can tolerate some pretty cold temps. They do all tend to sleep inside the coop when it's snowing. The rain doesn't bother them. They will spend the whole day and night in the rain and be no worse for wear. The real problem comes with changing weather patterns.

Here in Western Pa, our weather can be quite irregular. Yesterday it was in the 50s, today its 22! Oh and it rained a bit last night before it got cold enough to snow. See the picture up above? That is what greeted me this morning.

Those are ice coated feathers on the guineas backs. I wasn't home to chase them in at dusk, I was working. It was too warm for them to want to go in themselves, so 6 of them slept in the trees. The weather went from rainy to icy during the night. 

Luckily everyone made it through the night and had a warm breakfast and are now huddled in their draft-free coop warming up. Had I been home though, I would have certainly tried my hardest to get them in. 

Obviously they're not in any sort of distress about it.

25 ways to use empty feed bags

How many feed bags do you have laying around? At any given time I probably have about a dozen. I get chicken feed from 2 different places so I have 3 different types of bags. I have burlap feed sacks from the scratch grains at the mill. The paper ones come from the layer feed they sell and I get the plastic feed bags from pretty much everything I buy at Tractor Supply. 

The chickens eat at least 3 bags full a week, so I always have a fresh supply of bags. Which brings me to the question: what should I do with all these empty feed bags?

I'll start with the obvious answers first. The paper ones can be recycled or burned. If I start to collect too many I'll keep them in the truck and toss them in the paper recycle bin when I see one. 

The burlap ones can be reused in a ton of ways! I've made cute feed sack pillows for the patio out of them. They are also good for covering outdoor furniture cushions that are getting old. Plus I can always find someone who will take them off my hands for crafts.

The plastic feed bags though, those are a little harder to use up. Luckily I've came up with quite a few crafty ways over the years. Here are my top 25 favorite uses for plastic feed sacks:

Chickens have personalities!

I have learned so many things from having chickens. Some of them seem like 'duh...common sense' others are funny and some are just amazing facts. Oh, the things I didn't know! I learned that eggs aren't always egg shaped, a broody hen can poop a pile the same size as a dog does, and they eat just about anything with their favorite being Styrofoam. So weird. 

On of the things that really surprised me though, is that chickens have personalities. I really didn't expect this. I guess I thought they'd be boring. Cute, but just...boring. Boy was I wrong! Let me introduce you to a few of them:

Sally...the puppy dog. Sally is always right at your feet. Pet me! Pick me up! Feed me! She comes when called and will 'talk' to you with her little muttering noise she makes. Yes, she expects you to have a conversation with her! She also follows daddy around all the time, just like the dogs.

Rusty...Mr Ornery. Cranky and a bit of a tiny little fluffy bully. He's also a butt biter. Do NOT bend down in front of his roost at night because your butt is right in front of him and he will bite it! (picture from when he was a scruffy little baby roo)

Original...Miss Jealous. When feeding the chickens treats, Original will go behind me and pull on my pants leg like she's saying "where's mine?" So of course I have to give her a special pile of treats. It's so darn cute! Every time someone gets a treat she's right there pulling on me, telling me "I want what she has"   

How to keep chickens water from freezing in winter

It gets really cold here in the winter. There are times it doesn't get much higher then zero so keeping the chickens water in a liquid form can be quite a challenge. I spent years hauling warm water out several times a day to melt the ice in the waterers. Let me tell you, it's not fun. It's also not real healthy for the chickens. 

One of the biggest problems chickens face in the winter is moisture in their coop. If you take them warm water, steam is going to come off of it until it's cool. If their water container is inside the coop then you're adding moisture to the coop with every water refill. Bad idea since moisture inside a cold coop causes frostbite.

I finally got some heated bowls and a heated fountain and they have made all the difference. They keep the water liquid in all but the worst of the cold. Even when they do start to freeze, usually it only takes a tap or two to dislodge the ice and it melts again. 

The downside is that you do have to have some type of electric in your coop. However, I did just find out about a no electric trick that seems to work to keep the water liquid. More on that one at the end. For now, let's talk about the types of heated chicken waterers that I use.