The Times Home and Garden section has an interview with an architect who designed a fancy chicken coop for a residence in the Hamptons. The architect says:
This may be the only chicken coop that has radiant floor heating. Usually they're lit, or warmed, by a light bulb. That's what happens when you have a good contractor who does high-end Hamptons homes. When the contractor brought up radiant floor heating, I thought, 'That's ridiculous.' But then I thought, 'That's a really good idea.' If the heating fails, you'd have a bunch of dead chickens in winter.
The Times doesn't challenge that claim. But two chicken farmers I know say that while some heat may be necessary to make sure the chickens' drinking water doesn't freeze, the chickens themselves don't need heat. They are birds, after all. The Times suspends its usual concern with global climate change and excessive energy consumption when it's an architect-designed chicken coop in the Hamptons that is being heated.