Winter Animal Safety

Winter weather can create more problems than just keeping your animals warm. Ice can cause hazardous walking conditions and supplemental heat sources can start fires.

In this blog I will share some things we have learned while caring for our animals through winter weather.

Although it can be dangerous, ice can also be very pretty!

Ice

Freezing rain (where rain falls unfrozen and then freezes when it hits a surface) is one of the most dangerous forms of winter weather. The added weight from the ice can pull down tree branches and power lines, and the coating of ice on the ground is often difficult to see.

So, seemingly safe areas can be the most dangerous, as you aren't expecting it to be slippery. The ice can also pull down electric fences.

You might not think about it until you see it, but icy surfaces can be dangerous for animals to walk on as well. Animals with hooves or webbed feet will have the hardest time walking on ice. A good idea, if you are expecting freezing rain is to put down a path of straw to anywhere your animals regularly walk. This will give them a path with more traction to walk on.

Eva makes an attempt to get water before I moved it and put straw down.

If you don't get to it before, or are caught by surprise, you should put down sand (NOT deicing salt, it's not good for animals' feet) to give them traction. If you don't have sand, you should at least put down straw, it doesn't give much traction, but it will at least cushion their fall should they slip.

If you have electric fences that are getting weighed down by ice, try shaking or banging the ice off.

Another problem ice has caused for us is when water gets under or around the button to turn the electric fences on and off and freezes so we can't turn the fence off.

If this happens you can pour hot water over the button until it heats enough to melt the ice so you can turn the fence off.

Heat Lamps & Carbon Fiber Heaters

We have had two fires in our years of farming caused by heat lamps, thankfully no one was hurt, and we only had slight damage. However, it could have easily been a lot worse.

The first time it happened was due to hanging the heat lamp by something that could move, and the second time was because we hadn't noticed bedding had built up and come close enough to the bulb to ignite.

So, when you hang a heat lamp make certain:

• you hang it with something sturdy (preferably a chain)

• there is nothing combustible within 12 inches of the guard, sides or top

• animals cannot reach it

• the cord is out of the animals reach

• whatever you hang it from is sturdy, a good test is to pull or push on it with the amount of force you think whatever animal it is being used for could

Now, not all heat lamps are the same. For the most part I would say regular farm store heat lamps are dangerous, they rarely have a good guard, the hanger tends to fall off, allowing the lamp to fall, and the bulbs regularly break inside the base. The outside of the shield can also get very hot.

I would recommend you purchase a heat lamp from Premier 1 Supplies, they make their heat lamps with a guard and shield that greatly reduces the risk of fire. Their bulbs are also designed not to break in the base of the lamp.

If you need to provide heat to a larger area such as an entire coop, Premier also sells carbon fiber heaters which have a built-in kill switch that shuts the heater off if it is tilted beyond a certain point. So, if it fell, unless it happened to fall and remain upright (very unlikely) it would shut off.

A carbon fiber heater helps keeps our roosters from getting frostbite on their combs even when we had a HIGH of -1! The hens also love the extra heat, even though they don't need it.

Hopefully this blog was helpful, if anyone has other suggestions or questions on caring for animals during the winter, we would love to hear them!