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?

Click to expand...

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.