So Stinkin Hot

I have a mister for mine.  It was $10 at my local feed store but I'm told the same mister is sold at Home Depot.  It is called a Cobra Mister and has two mister heads so it shoots the mist out in two directions.  It uses very little water, and the documentation on it says it reduces the temperature by 20 degrees.  The testament is the number of birds that will hang out under the mister when it is on.  It must feel better under it or they wouldn't bother.

I also refill water bowls with cold water every couple of hours because the water gets warm out there when the temperature is 110 degrees.

Just fresh water & they have shade.  Chickens will pant in the heat, it's how they cool down.

Our coop and run are shaded pretty well, but of course it still gets very hot on days like these.  We put a waterer under the coop and refill every few hours.  Until we did this, we had figured that they were getting enough water.  But it turns out that they weren't venturing out from under the coop very much.  The waterer under the coop gets used at least 10x more than the waterers out in the run.

Another thing that we did was to start freezing some of the scraps that we give to our flock.  Last, we sprayed down the run area with a hose during the heat of the day to knock down some of the heat coming from the soil.

Mine spend the day here. Pretty lucky birds. I also put frozen 1 gal. jugs in their waterer to keep it icey cold for them.

Shade. Shade also creates a natural draft, which helps.

Cool clean water.

Yesterday I did add 12 oz. Poweraide to 1 gallon water and the turkeys loved it.

The chickens drank about the same amount.

I'll get more electrolytes at the feed store tomorrow, they seem to help.

Panting is a natural phenomena in chickens, as in dogs. It is how they cool down.

Yesterday was so hot here that my daughter decided to take the chickens in the pool-I have 5, so she took them in one at a time-they loved it-after they got out they all seemed to be happier since they had cooled off. The chickens swim just like ducks. At first they flapped their wings, but then they calmed down and that was that-swimming chickens. Now when my husband saw the pictures--well- he really wasn't to happy about the chickens swimming in the pool

I put frozen jugs or water bottles in the waterer, have a mister going near the hen house door, with good cross ventilation, and I feed frozen fruit during the hottest part of the day I also put ice cream buckets that I have frozen water in around the nests and above the nests to hopefully cool it down a bit.  I've seen other chickens in swimming pools on BYC in another post....put one of my hens in the horse trough as I was filling it, she was not impressed and flew right out....then looked at me as if to say, how dare you do such a horrid thing....then stalked off.  She hasn't been near me since.

Swimming Chickens. Too Funny. And I thought I've seen everything.

what a riot swimming chickens!! good dogs too!!