Chickens and Rain

[mdbokc]

Quote:
mine too. Most arent bothered my light to medium rain, even when its on the chilly side outdoors.

A tad off topic but the other day it was rather windy here and a co-worker came back from lunch and said "it's a quilt washing day out there". It almost brought a tear to my eye. My grandmother use to always say that on a windy day and she lived up to the saying. On nice windy day (especially the first one of the springg) all the bed linen were stripped, washed and hung out to flap and dry in the wind and sunshine.

Yep, those spring winds are nice....And I remember when we used to dry clothes on the line. However, when the Oklahoma wind comes roaring in at 30 mph sustained and gusts to 50, hour after hour; a couple days of this and the poor girls are stressed out and need lots of pets at bedtime in the coop to help settle them down. Amazing how they pick little fights amongst themselves when stressed out by this sort of thing. But interestingly, reasonable rain seems to be soothing and they are very content. Wade a lot they do in puddles too.

 

[CrazyFowlFreak]

My idio, er, chickens, will stay outside in the rain, wind, sleet, hail, and snow. But that's only because we bought them a $1300 coop.

If I had an old, crappy coop, they'd probably go in it. Ergh!

 

[halfpint512]

It rained all day on Tuesday of this week...and they stayed out the entire day. They looked like drowned rats, but they didn't care.

 

[2DogsFarm]

3 out of my 5 stayed relatively dry even though it rained all day yesterday.
Their run has an overhang if they chose to avoid the rain.

The other 2 were soaked to the skin. I tried blotting the worst of it off with a towel, but they were having none of that!

After spending the night in their coop both were nice & fluffy this morning.

spamee34:
one of mny soaked hens is a Houdan - very Polish-like in appearance.
She was totally drenched but is fine today.

 

[MuranoFarms]

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You don't have silkies do you? Mine come in looking like drowned rats! Well, actually 3 of them have the sense to stay under the pine trees when its raining! The rest don't care and look like muppet-show rejects by the time they bring their wet butts in!

 

[karen71]

Mine stay out in the rain unless it's real hard then they will go under the deck ... the Silkies do look like drowned rats

The standards look normal .
Mine will not come out in the snow though they don't like it
5 weeks is young so they should probably stay inside .

 

[Tamrajh]

I have to laugh at the comment about the old crappy coop.
We have a coop that leaks everywhere; the roof, the walls have holes in them, there's two openings for human-sized doors with no doors on them, and there's a dirt floor. The girls all stay inside when it rains. They still get wet, mind you, but they stay inside.
We're fixing up the old coop this weekend, weather permitting. It's been either raining or snowing every weekend for I don't know how long now. Supposed to be good weather this weekend finally.

 

[Wizbop]

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When will I not have to worry about this anymore? We live in NC. We are having spring like weather now but it is getting pretty cool in the evenings (upper thirties tonight). They are mostly feathered now, but they're still coming in for nighttime. I worry about my babies getting too cold.

 

[Wizbop]

BTW, this thread is cracking me up!

 

[lilblessings5]

We had our first good rain this spring the other day and I couldn't believe. My hens didn't care. They are almost 1 year old and they were soaking wet but just kept scratching and digging and wondering all through the barn yard just as if it was sunny. They however did not like snow this winter and choose to stay inside most days.