The things we do to help our chickens in the heat!

[cpwhip]

Quote:
Evidently you haven't seen the thread with the lady who puts her chickens in the swimming pool to cool down

(from last week). Lots use misters, but my birds huddle in the furthest corner away from it when I run one.

The frozen jugs are good for contained birds...

nope! I haven't seen that thread I'll look for it thanks the reason I didn't think you were supposed to wet chicken's is because when I was 1st married my Mother brought me home a chicken she had in the truck of her car as a surprise, well this chicken smelled horrible so I gave it a bath and used Suave shampoo and man that chicken smelled even worse it stunk up the whole house thats when everyone started telling me you dont give chickens a bath.

I put a 2 liter bottle in the freezer a couple hours ago so I'll try that tomorrow thankfully we're having heavy down pours at the moment and the temp went from 97 to 75

 

[FireTigeris]

You can bathe chickens, I use diluted dawn or baby shampoo

 

[lovesgliders]

Weird... I see that lots of people here use fans, but I was always told that fans were useless for animals that don't sweat (and I'm pretty sure chickens don't sweat). Thoughts?

The logic behind it was that fans only feel cool to us because they evaporate the sweat off our skin. To non-sweating animals, fans are just pushing the same warm air around.

I am thankful that it never gets above 90 here, and that's a very oddball, very hot day. One of the few benefits of living on an island: the ocean acts like insulation, and keeps us cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

 

[teach1rusl]

Quote:
You know - I brought up this very subject about a month back. The explanation I received made sense to me...that while chickens don't sweat (therefore no evaporation), most chickens DO spread their wings to encourage heat loss. So a fan will create quicker heat loss with the wings held out. Also, the way their feathers lay tends to seal in heat (which we read about in winter time), so the moving air from a fan can ruffle/muss their feathers, allowing more heat to escape...

ETA - I did a poor job of explaining that, didn't I??? LOL But hopefully you got the gist of it.

 

[Tikkijane]

Frozen milk jugs- they love to stand on it, and we lay it sideways so it's longer and more can get around. We also do frozen pop bottles and have used freezer packs (the hard ones) in baggies to keep the pack as clean as possible. We do ice in the water, frozen treats, and a wading pool (cat litter box

). We've also done some misting and have done wet towels, etc (breeze blows through and helps, plus, the think the dripping water is interesting). This is the first week (ok, we're in the 97+ range) in about a month where we have not been 100 + every single day. This summer has been brutal, for sure!

 

[featherbaby]

See my post in SWAMP COOLER TO THE RESCUE thread.