For next summer, if it is again hot as you know where:
My 100 or so DP chickens free-range on 3 acres of mostly wooded pasture. When hottest (95 - 114 for weeks on end), they gathered on a lightly shaded knoll not far from a hydrant. Daily, hooked up a sprinkler for an hour that put out a 25 foot circle of coarse spray (on a rural water line and it's EXPENSIVE). They stood around under the spray, then hunkered down on the damp ground for the rest of the day. Only had to do it twice in one day once.
At night.....coop didn't cool down. Locked them out 24/7 so they roosted along the outside walls on a pile of landscape timbers. (Nest boxes moved to north exterior wall of coop under a big oak tree.) Put my very best guard dog out with them, and turned a security light on so it shown about 30 feet out, on the ground between the building and the area where predators would/could come from. Dog bedded down between the birds and the circle of light, and did not loose even one from either heat or predator.
For rabbits: Six NZW meat rabbits in shaded all wire 1 x 1 (1/2 x1 floors) welded wire cages with tall 2 x 4 frames with cage bottoms 4 feet above the ground for air flow and some protection from any visiting dog, inside the 6 foot high chain link yard fence. At 100 degrees, wet them down completely with a soft spray from a hose (water lines only 2 feet deep, so eventually all water was almost lukewarm...no chance of shock). Put a 1 gallon jug of ice in each cage and did not lose any of them either. Repeated daily for weeks. After a week or so, they did not run from the spray....turned their butts to it....and laid stretched out without moving so I could put the jugs against their sides....and stayed there. Didn't lose any of them either.
Did lose two 3 day old litters when the heat first hit. Removed most of the hair from the kits, but the does pulled more and I did not check for that......knew better; my fault completely.
Hope this helps somebody if/when we get the heat again.
