What Do You Do for Your Barn Cats in the Winter?

[Paige777]

Wow, thank you for the excellent advice! You all have some fabulous ideas, and I’ll definitely construct some sort of kitty shelter for them. It’s mainly the older guy who has me concerned; he’s starting to show his age a bit. But there’s a perfect corner in the hay area where I can stack some bales, construct some sort of shelter, and create a wind block.

And to the posters who noted deworming and vaccinating - thank you! Yes, kitties are all vaccinated for this year, and I deworm and give flea preventative regularly. Your advice is well-timed; it’s a perfect reminder that it’s time to deworm again.

[Simkie]

I don’t think anyone has mentioned these yet? They’re a nice heat source on those cold nights, especially if you don’t have electric in your barn or just don’t want to go with a heated bed for whatever reason.

[Gainer]

[QUOTE=Simkie;8874063]
I don’t think anyone has mentioned these yet? They’re a nice heat source on those cold nights, especially if you don’t have electric in your barn or just don’t want to go with a heated bed for whatever reason.[/QUOTE]

Yes, heat disks are wonderful! Cats can’t resist them.

[walkinthewalk]

We make little cat cubbyholes between the hay bales for the cats.

I give them water in a small rubber bowl placed inside a bigger rubber bowl that has been packed with waste hay.

If that water freezes, I have pipe panel stalls , the cates can get to the horses heated stall buckets.

I also have heated tubs outside where they can get water.

I do bring them warm water twice daily and put it in the little rubber bowl.

[SusanO]

I am in Alabama so not as cold but I have two older barn cats. Actually front porch cats since they prefer to live there. I bought one a heated cat house last winter. She loved it - I think she only came out to eat and poop. I tried using a heating pad but it only stayed on for an hour at a time. So I put an electric blanket in a box and plugged it in at night. The other one loved that. When it gets brutally cold ( don’t laugh it gets below freezing here) they will go down to the tack room which is insulated. I put a heater in there and run it while I am working down there and unplug it over night. So it stays warmer than I keep my house.

I want to get a big dog house to put on the front porch for Bubba and Stinky who like to snuggle up when it is cold and put the electric blanket in there. That would block the wind more than a box. Maybe paint “Cujo” or “Helga” or “Wolfgang” on the dog house so people will think I have a rottweiler or other big dog instead of 4 cats.

[Mango20]

My barn cats rejected my attempts to make them more comfortable in the winter. The only thing they like is that when I get hay, I leave a little gap between the stacks for them to go in when it’s cold.

[2DogsFarm]

I’m too cheap to spring for a Snugglesafe.
I get the large-sized heatpacks they sell for hunters, usually find them at Target or Walmart in packs of 10-12 for under $10.
Activate one for each cat bed/shelter & they stay warm all night long w/o me worrying about electric.
These:

http://www.basspro.com/HotHands-Body-and-Hand-Super-Warmer/product/10817/?hvarAID=shopping_googleproductextensions

Actually, I don’t worry too much, as in subzero temps I also have a heatlamp that shines directly on a cat tree so kitteh can spend some time out of the stacked hay or enclosed shelter. Plus a small heated waterbowl of her very own.

[beowulf]

I hate to be the only doom and gloom person on this thread and I know you inherited them…

I am in MA and honestly, think that if you can, you should do everything within your resources to get them somewhere safe in the winter. We are next to two old farms and they had a feral cat colony for the longest time. We did our part and tried to catch a few, one even made an excellent house cat but by and large we did the TNR program …

It’s not the cold you need to worry about in MA. It’s the predators. As it gets colder the prey gets scarcer and you’ll be finding the hawks, owls, fox & coyotes get awful close to the sheds mid-winter. We have had them come right up into our paddocks and pluck chickens off the fence - I even saw a fox a few years ago under our shed. At 7 and 10 the cats are old enough to know better than to be out at night, but as they get older they also get less sharp… so they may be on borrowed time… so if they don’t have a ‘shelter’ or hiding area where they can completely escape a predator I’d want to make one. Something like a place they can run into like a tack room or shed - not something like a Rubbermaid because a predator can easily get into that too.

Any way, not a single one of our TNR/barn cats made it through the winter. And these were cats that grew up in the area and weren’t young. The feral colony is gone now, thanks to an intrepid coyote population.

We have a fully feral barn cat now I am trying to convince to come up to the house, we have a vacancy – but he is very feral and I worry for him this winter. He is not approachable and I do worry about his longevity if he is outside.

[PeteyPie]

Is there any reason they can’t come into the house at night? Especially with the older cat, it might be nice if you start introducing him to your house and your indoor cats so that as the years go by and he gets into his late teens he will have an easy transition to being handled for grooming and vet visits and to living indoors.

[SusanO]

I guess I have been lucky about predators. I have lost one barn cat to congestive heart failure ( euthanized) but I still have the rest of them(4) including two kitties that are between 15 to 20 years old. However - the bubba’s out here do a lot of deer hunting and shoot at any predator they see - so the coyotes stay far away from humans. I hear coyotes at night but have only seen one in 15 years living in the boonies. Coyotes are much more dangerous in the suburbs where people are not blasting away with their guns at all hours. I also start locking the cats in the barn when cold weather sets in.

Unfortunately mine mark and pee on the walls so indoor house living doesn’t work so well although they do have a big tack room that is their house. ( And yes they are fixed.) One is old and retired, one is old and has always been worthless, Bubba is too fat to venture very far from the front porch so only Gremlin hunts. So they generally sit on the front porch waiting for me to feed them and are not out in the fields. I also have the property fenced with diamond mesh fencing that goes to the ground. Coyotes can still get in but it is not so convenient for them. If I started noticing predators around they would have to spend the nights locked up. Or the days if it came to that. They are my pets and are not expendable.

Maybe I should send some bubba’s up there to scare off the coyotes. Coyotes are about the only threat down here to a grown cat. I did have a gray fox once in my backyard but it was no larger than my cats. I think it was climbing the peach tree and eating the wormy fruit and not eyeing the cats as dinner… It co-existed with my cats. Owls and hawks not big enough to go after a cat. Cat did predate a baby owl which was sad. The few hawks I had hung around to eat the birds off the bird feeder - didn’t want to take on a grown cat.

But yes - if your cats are being taken by predators it is cruel to keep them in that situation.

[Kathy_Nebel]

We cut two doors in an old cooler (cats like an entrance and an emergency exit) to serve as an insulated house. Bed it with straw. Straw has more insulating value than hay, from what I have read. When it gets below freezing I add a Snuggle Safe disk wrapped in a bit of fleece. You heat the disc in the microwave and it retains warmth for 10 hours. I know this is probably overkill, but I only have one barn cat, so she has no one to snuggle with. And she loves her heated cat house! This is the disc: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=1074&cmpid=01cseYY&gclid=CjwKEAjwydK_BRDK34GenvLB61YSJACZ8da3TpH56zVxXX4BUzWSwWApPZ0aVs10l0OVhnoy3w1dLBoCWoHw_wcB

[Bicoastal]

[QUOTE=Paige777;8872712]
My thoughts are that I’ll make sure that hay bales are up against the walls of the barn in a corner to block out drafts, and I’ll have to come up with some way of keeping their water from freezing - electrically heated water bowl, perhaps?[/QUOTE]

Make tunnels of hay or build a dog house of sorts. Google feral cat winter shelters for plans using a rubbermaid container or styrofoam cooler. Do not add blankets that will stay wet for a long time. Old hay or straw is better.

An electric water bowl designed for kennels may help keep water above freezing. Heated kennel pads for use in dog houses are also available from this source.

Snuggle Safe’s under a bowl of hot water if you don’t feel comfortable using electric and for their sleeping spots.

Self-warming crate pad is supposed to reflect body heat back to the animal. It sounds like a layer of foil between the two cloth layers.

http://alleycatadvocates.org/communitycat-care-center/creating-winter-shelters/

http://www.neighborhoodcats.org/how-to-tnr/colony-care/feral-cat-winter-shelter

[Mukluk]

We send ours to the Bahamas for a well deserved vacation.

[st_francis]

We have just one cat in the barn so he has no one to curl up with in the hay which is what the cats did at our old barn. I bought him a heated cat bed off Kijiji for 20 bucks and wrapped a couple of old sweaters around it. Last winter even on the coldest days I’d stick my hand in and he was toasty warm. I just put a little hot water in his dish morning and night when I do chores.

[trubandloki]

@Scribbler;8872762

As far as water bowls, if you are keeping your horse buckets or troughs free of ice for the horses, that will do for the cats too. They don’t need their own water in their own bowls.

If you are going to go this route please make sure the cats have a way to easily balance and drink. You do not want your cat falling into the water trough because it had to lean so far over while balancing on the edge.

Our barn cats have a heated cat hut like This. It works great. The cats love it. This will be its third season.

I admit our barn cats did fine for lots of years with nothing but we felt that since they were getting older that it was time to add a heated spot for them. And no, they can not come in the house. They do not tend to come near the house and attempting to pick them up would lead to a freaking out cat and a shredded human. They let us pet them but they will never be house cats. They have held onto their feral side just enough.

[Crockpot]

I always built a warm insulated cubby hole for my one barn cat and he loved it. But now he is elderly so last winter for the first time he lived in the house- his choice. When Spring came he went back to the barn- his choice .

For younger cats- yes make sure they have a warm place to go- such as a catflap to the tackroom if you have a heated tackroom or a heated or insulated bed…

[trubandloki]

I want to add, that part of the reason our cats do OK in the winter is that they do not have to go out. They are well fed. Hunting is not necessary.

They do hunt, they do go out. On the really nasty days they eat their cat food and snuggle in their warm spot and get drinks from their heated water dish and wait for the weather to get nicer before they go back out. Heck, they even have a litter box.

[Crockpot]

yes.

It is so wrong to think that barn cats need to be hungry to hunt.

My barn cat is well fed and dewormed -

Hunting for him is instinctive- nothing to do with food

This is unfortunately a mistake often made by people thinking barn cats need to be hungry so they do not feed them !!!:eek:.

NO

[rebecca_yount]

Pig mat.

[Cat_Tap]

I make sure mine are in the barn at night before I close up. All I have to do is shake the Temptations bag and they come running from all directions. Also just before winter they seem to eat extra and double in width. They have blankets on the counter which is under the bank and so no drafts. With the horses in the barn it stays comfortable.

During the day they have an opening under the big door in the mow where they snuggle up between the hay bales. They seem to do just fine.