Arizona Chickens

We've been over 90F a few days now. The chicks are doing okay, this is their first summer so we're watching them closely. The Bielefelders are nicely feathered (and huge). The rest have feathers but also still have their chick fluff. The new feathers are very pretty and shiny. I love seeing them stretch their beautiful wings. The brooder is 8' long so they get to fly a good bit.

We bought these trays and filled them with about 1 1/2" of water and stuck them in the freezer to put in the brooder/coop (minus the office supplies, haha). They can stand on the ice or in the melting water and drink the cool water.



Anyone else seeing 90+ temps?

EmmaDonovan said:

We've been over 90F a few days now. The chicks are doing okay, this is their first summer so we're watching them closely. The Bielefelders are nicely feathered (and huge). The rest have feathers but also still have their chick fluff. The new feathers are very pretty and shiny. I love seeing them stretch their beautiful wings. The brooder is 8' long so they get to fly a good bit.

We bought these trays and filled them with about 1 1/2" of water and stuck them in the freezer to put in the brooder/coop (minus the office supplies, haha). They can stand on the ice or in the melting water and drink the cool water.

View attachment 3805060

Anyone else seeing 90+ temps?

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Now that I'm in the Valley, I only have coturnix quail. They've been panting a bit. I'm using a small cottage cheese tub half filled with ice, dumped onto a plant pot tray. They took right to it. When I had chickens I used trays similar to what you have, plus some smaller/shallower. But I just put blue bunny ice cream tubs filled with water up to the middle of the B, frozen, and dumped the ice onto the trays. The hens loved that!

Up north I could do that the minute they started to pant, which was 90 degrees. But down here, I think I need to climatize them to much hotter. So I'm doing them only in the heat of the day. Otherwise, they'll never adapt to the heat of the day.

EmmaDonovan said:

We've been over 90F a few days now. The chicks are doing okay, this is their first summer so we're watching them closely. The Bielefelders are nicely feathered (and huge). The rest have feathers but also still have their chick fluff. The new feathers are very pretty and shiny. I love seeing them stretch their beautiful wings. The brooder is 8' long so they get to fly a good bit.

We bought these trays and filled them with about 1 1/2" of water and stuck them in the freezer to put in the brooder/coop (minus the office supplies, haha). They can stand on the ice or in the melting water and drink the cool water.

View attachment 3805060

Anyone else seeing 90+ temps?

Click to expand...

I just put the first Tupperware full of water in the chest freezer today. I use a kiddie pool so everyone can get in at once if they want, but my crew is all grown or almost.

Oof... I can already tell flies are going to be a problem. I haven't seen any around the brooder but it's a contained area and we keep everything pretty clean.

Today we replaced all the litter and pads. We put the used litter and pads into a big trash bag and boy oh boy did the flies come out of nowhere to swoop down on that! Sooooooo many. Gross.

What's the most effective ways you've found to deal with flies in/around your coop?

Yellow sticky traps and the really stinky bait in the water traps.

EmmaDonovan said:

Oof... I can already tell flies are going to be a problem. I haven't seen any around the brooder but it's a contained area and we keep everything pretty clean.

Today we replaced all the litter and pads. We put the used litter and pads into a big trash bag and boy oh boy did the flies come out of nowhere to swoop down on that! Sooooooo many. Gross.

What's the most effective ways you've found to deal with flies in/around your coop?

Click to expand...

Same as @igorsMistress ... keeping everything dry also helps.

Does anyone use a greenhouse frame as a coop?

If so, what size and how does it hold up in monsoon storms and microbursts?

I got these water heater drain pans from Home Depot ($13ea) plus the screw on plug also from HD ($2ea). They measure 26in in diameter and almost 3in tall. Now if only the chickens would get in….

It was 91F inside the brooder at the hottest point today. Some of the chickens were panting earlier but everyone is very active and alert (go stand on the ice, you silly creatures)!

Everyone seems happy, no one is cranky and pecking at others. Only a few still have tiny bits of chick fluff left. They're all well feathered. New feathers are so shiny and pretty.

They like to burrow down into the pine shavings and sleep together in a big fluffy pile. They have plenty of roosts but they mostly seem to use those to perch on and watch the outside world during the day.

We have a tarp over the only part of the brooder that the sun hits directly. We also mounted a fan outside aimed right into the brooder.

We add ice to the waterers so the water stays cool. They can also drink the melted water in the ice pan.

Hope that'll do for now. Hotter days are a-comin'.