chicken and Duck Question

[Jill B.]

this is the first winter I have had chickens and ducks. (I have 2 ducks in with my chickens. ) I do not have the ducks in their own house yet. They were staying outside but recently I put them in a small dog house in my mud room at night. I am in the Northeast and we have cold weather and 20" of snow now.

I put a 150 watt light bulb on the chickens at night in the coop before I shut them up. I also have a warmer for the water. I can run only one thing at a time so I turn off the light in the day and put the warmer on the water. Is this what I should do??? I suppose I can run another extension cord up to the coop if I should do both at the same time. The chickens are staying in the coop. Some of the snow is packed down but the other part, in the pen, is not. This limits the area they can walk in. Should I shovel it out?

Thanks for any help!

[freebs]

One question, why dont you let you ducks in the coop with the chickens?? mine bunk with the chickens at nite. I never shoveled any snow out of the chicken pen when we had snow. i never knew of anyone that did either. Can you put the water close to where the light is? if so just run the light and not the water warmerm that whay they can get up under the light and warm up during the day if needed.

[ladytoysdream]

We run a single light during the day in the chicken coop for 16 hens and 3 roosters. You don't want a light at night, that will mess their schedule up.
We use no heater for the water. We just use 2 smaller metal dishes and fill them more often. If it gets frozen, we take it out, thraw it with hot water and then can put it back in the coop. We built our 8 by 8 ft coop end of August this year. Then we moved the used car port over and attached it to the coop. We have it tarped on the top and the sides, and along the bottom part on the inside is bales of hay in a row. So the chickens have a protected yard to play in. They can eat the hay and or walk on it. They also have extra perches in that area, so they can get out of each other's way if need be, and a little exercise.
Hubby does move any snow with the garden tractor so we can get to the pen. A small area by the 2 doors needs to be hand shoveled sometimes. About 3 by 8 ft.
If I were you, the ducks would be in with the chickens. They should be fine, unless they start playing in the water dishes and making messes.
You can do a copy and paste of the urls in my sig line to see our set up if you want some ideas.