I live in North Dakota and in the spring will be building a chicken coop. I'm wondering if I can use cardboard or newspaper as insulation?
By terri1nd from ND
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I am in Saskatchewan, and have 8 chickens. The coop isn't insulated but we have a heat lamp in one corner and they seem to take turns sitting under there. There is also a lot of straw in one section, and they need an electric water dish to keep the water from freezing. They seem to be doing just fine; although they aren't laying over the winter which I understand is quite common.
When I was growing up in SD my parents chicken coop wasn't insulated in the walls, it was just plain wood. However there was straw in the rafters by the roof.
We bought an old farm and one of our chicken coops was insulated with news paper. This past spring we had to remove it all because hundreds of mice had made it there home.
We have lined the inside of a chicken coop with pasteboard boxes and it worked just fine, if you are going to use a heat lamp, make sure you don't put it enar the paper (you don't want a fire). Straw makes a good way for them to keep warm, also. You may want to use the broken down boxes on the outside of the coop. We had them on the inside. Either way would keep the cold drafts out.
I stapled plastic sheathing to the studs on the inside and stuffed bags full of shredded paper sprinkled with diatomaceous earth into the wall cavities. Then stapled cardboard over that.
I had problems with the chickens pecking at the cardboard so what I did was go to my local carpet store and picked up an old carpet that was being thrown away. Nailed it to the walls over the cardboard or foam board. Bottom side out, carpet side next to the wall.
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