How well can chickens handle heat?

[aart]

I have never used the 'insert article' function and I think this was perhaps the first time I have seen it used in any of the threads I have been following. If you hover the mouse over the title, you see the title change to a link. But I did not know that and only read what was on the screen.

It's a new thing, came with the last upgrade.
Not many know about it or use it.
It take up a bit of space, I used it here it due to the pic it showed.
Will note that it's a link in the future.

More importantly, since you do use an ordinary house box fan, how often do you have to clean it out? If it works good for you, and is safe, that would certainly be a lot cheaper than buying a barn fan. Especially if you only need to use it occasionally.

I blow it off with the air compressor when I take it out in the fall.
It doesn't get any dirtier than when used in the house to blow cooler air inside.
Only run it for about 4 hours on the hot days,
and never leave it on overnight due to fire fears.
It's an ancient fan, gotta be at least 20, maybe 25 years old.
It moves much more air than the newer 20" house fans which are not deep in housing and blade angle.

 

[3KillerBs]

Ventilation is key to just about everything.

This.

While the usual guideline is 1 square foot of ventilation per chicken, my empirical test is to put my head and shoulders into the coop on a warm, sunny day. If it's warmer inside than out I need more ventilation.

Provide plenty of ventilation, as much shade as possible, and plenty of water and your chickens should be fine. I had my in-town flock before I knew about the advantages of offering electrolytes once a week in hot weather and never had anyone showing signs of heat stress despite 95-95 weather defining a southeastern US summer. (for me, 85F between mid-June and mid-September is a cool day).

They did spend more time digging deep into their shadiest dusting holes then and drank more water.

Now that I know, I'm offering a second waterer with electrolytes once a week in hot weather -- especially when nights remain in the high 70's so it never *really* cools off.

My experience working in a no-AC factory shows that, with humans at least, the sudden onset of heat is more dangerous than gradual warming so I'd take more precautions if if jumped from 65F to 85F from one week to the next than if it gradually warmed over the course of a month.

 

[Sally PB]

my empirical test is to put my head and shoulders into the coop on a warm, sunny day. If it's warmer inside than out I need more ventilation.

This is a great idea.

Last summer, I left the people door open all day. That made a huge difference. I would see the birds go in the coop, come out, all day long, as they wanted.

 

[gtaus]

I blow it off with the air compressor when I take it out in the fall.
It doesn't get any dirtier than when used in the house to blow cooler air inside.
Only run it for about 4 hours on the hot days,
and never leave it on overnight due to fire fears.

Sounds like a good system to me. I think it's important for anyone considering to use fans for moving air in the chicken coop understand that a clogged fan motor is a potential fire hazard.

I might be a little more cautious of fire hazards as I was a trained fire fighter when I was serving in the Navy. That was not my main job, but fire fighting was everybody's concern onboard the ship. After you go through Fire Fighting school, you see almost everything as a potential fire hazard. 35 years later, I still remember lessons learned about fire safety.

 

[aart]

I might be a little more cautious of fire hazards as I

....caught my apartment on fire.

 

[gtaus]

....caught my apartment on fire.

Sounds like there is more to that story....

 

[Coop de Grille]

We're in South Carolina where it's very hot all summer. We just put misting nozzles in the outside run to help cool them down.

 

[mommiesrcool]

Hmmm ok. I think they should be ok.. red sex links have pretty big combs from what I’ve seen, indicating heat hardiness. You can also find ways to keep them cool, like putting ice in their water.

X2 if you have a kitty pool i like to fill it up with ice water and mine like to sit it in it and you can make them frozen treats too like freeze some fruits

 

[DaisyG2317]

and the frozen fruit mix from Walmart. I put the frozen fruit in a big bowl of water and freeze it overnight, then put the big frozen mass with them in the daytime. A nice, cool treat.

 

[Blue Raptor]

Supposedly red sex link. And I’m talking about low 80 f high 70 f

If they seem to be getting too hot (panting hard, drooped wings, sitting around) you can dip their feet in a bucket of cool water for about 5 minutes. It helps.