How do people in hot climates keep chickens?
It's 7:40am here and it's already 34C(93F), in another two hours it'll but 40C(104F) and stay like that until 4:00pm when it'll gradually cool off back down to 34C, At dawn this morning it was 30C(86F).
This is not our hot season - Hot season is daytime temps of 44C(111F) and nighttime temps of 34-36C.
We don't do anything special for our chickens but they are used to this kind of heat.
They do get hot, they move from tree to tree at speed, because the ground is hot - too hot to walk on with bare human feet, searching out the shade.
They pant a lot, they hold their wings slightly open, they spend a lot of time near the pond but they don't look stressed by the heat.
Our coop is only just a roof, with wire mesh walls so there's plenty of ventilation, mostly they would only go in there at night but the girls with eggs are in there all day and they cope OK.
I'm not sure how much difference a fan would make to a chicken, they don't sweat, which is the primary means by which a fan keeps us cooler but I guess losing heat from their mouths, neck and the bare(ish) bits under their wings would be speeded up by moving air. I don't think that a fan would be nearly as effective for a chicken as it is to us. We have a fan on the terrace at the front of our house and although the chickens often come up on the terrace they don't sit in the air from the fan.
Maybe we could have a global chicken body temperature test and share our results. I would think our birds will be no hotter than those from a cold climate, just the same way my body temperature is no hotter than people from a cold climate.
It's 7:40am here and it's already 34C(93F), in another two hours it'll but 40C(104F) and stay like that until 4:00pm when it'll gradually cool off back down to 34C, At dawn this morning it was 30C(86F).
This is not our hot season - Hot season is daytime temps of 44C(111F) and nighttime temps of 34-36C.
We don't do anything special for our chickens but they are used to this kind of heat.
They do get hot, they move from tree to tree at speed, because the ground is hot - too hot to walk on with bare human feet, searching out the shade.
They pant a lot, they hold their wings slightly open, they spend a lot of time near the pond but they don't look stressed by the heat.
Our coop is only just a roof, with wire mesh walls so there's plenty of ventilation, mostly they would only go in there at night but the girls with eggs are in there all day and they cope OK.
I'm not sure how much difference a fan would make to a chicken, they don't sweat, which is the primary means by which a fan keeps us cooler but I guess losing heat from their mouths, neck and the bare(ish) bits under their wings would be speeded up by moving air. I don't think that a fan would be nearly as effective for a chicken as it is to us. We have a fan on the terrace at the front of our house and although the chickens often come up on the terrace they don't sit in the air from the fan.
Maybe we could have a global chicken body temperature test and share our results. I would think our birds will be no hotter than those from a cold climate, just the same way my body temperature is no hotter than people from a cold climate.
