Idea for keeping chickens COOL in outrageous HEAT!! Update w/ PICTURE!

[Crazy4Chicks]

Quote:
Your boxers, my labs. What's the deal with that??

I have a boxer who thinks she is part lab LOVES water -I have to get the hose and wet them down a few times a day to battle the heat


well I looked around I have a few ice packs -- I still need to find a trash can I have a large clear plastic tote but I think the sun will just shine down and heat it up - so I guess it is off to the store to get a few trash cans to put chickens in LOL

 

[chickens4jojo]

Thanks so much for sharing your great idea! I think I will try it down here in SC.

 

[AhBee01]

If you don't have ice packs, butter containers will work, just fill and freeze, keep the ice in the container with the lid on, and you can refreeze when the ice melts!
Big Plastic bins will work too, but I only have dark colored ones!
How about an old cooler laid on it'd side!

What a great idea!

My run is in the shade, but they still get hot, so I will be trying this idea out when needed!
I bet milk jugs and 2 liter soda bottles would work too! I always have them in my recycle bin!
Brenda

 

[Rose's Human Hen]

well i think thats a good idea i have a black Cochin too and she looks just like that just less feathers on the head.

 

[arwmommy]

OK, now that it's been a few days.......has this worked out for anyone else other than me?

 

[AeronTS]

I took a refrigeration fundamentals course last spring semester at a community college, and despite the poor grade of a 'B' (should have had a C in my opinion), I did learn a thing or two. One of them is that warmer air always migrates to cooler air, and the other thing is that there is no such thing as cold air.

What happens when you feel cold is that your body's temperature is significantly warmer than the ambient temperature, so your body loses heat until either (a) the ambient temperature is the same as your body temperature or (b) you continue to pile on clothing to the point that you don't lose enough heat to feel 'cold'.

What I am wondering is if we took the idea of ice packs and set up a fan inside (to protect it from rain) the coop in front of a window, and made a rack on the outside of the coop outside the window, and use the principle of warmer air migrating to cooler air. This would cause the coop's temperature to drop until both the temp of the ice packs (ice melted) and that of coop are the same, or until the coop is an icebox because someone decided to stack a gozillion ice packs in the path of the outgoing air

Would something like this work? I had tried to do this when it was really hot, but without the ice packs, and found it made no difference. Why? Because the temp inside the coop was as warm as (if not warmer) than the outside temp. Pretty neat stuff, huh?

 

[chilisweet]

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Ok you lost me at "ambient"....

 

[ozark hen]

We keep a box fan hanging from the ceiling inside the coop near the north side, shaded window. We also put frozen plastic milk jugs of ice inside the coop. It seemed to keep them comfortable as I never saw "much" (saw a bit) of panting from the chickens. Dh hung the fan on a clothes hanger wire and when started up it kind of rotated on it's own.

 

[AeronTS]

Quote:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ambient

 

[Alpha Roo]

Quote:
Your idea would work if the window and fan were large enough that the air inside the coop migrated out to the warmer air faster than the warm outside air would replace it. It becomes a problem with efficiency. How large would the window, fan, and ice packs need to be in order to accomplish this? I believe the window would need to be larger than the coop. And/or a very weather sealed coop restricting the amount of air-in ventilation.
A swamp cooler doing the same thing but in reverse, would be much more efficient.