keeping chickens cool in summer heat

[LOVEMYCHICKS03]

- NOT MY VIDEO CREDIT GOES TO desertsun02!

 

[LOVEMYCHICKS03]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/865013/chicken-show#post_13071921

 

[Yermite]

This just made my night! I look like this

right now

 

[Yermite]

This is a great thread! I've been sitting here for over a half hour soaking up knowledge! Love being a member here!!! Yah!

 

[LOVEMYCHICKS03]

This is a great thread! I've been sitting here for over a half hour soaking up knowledge! Love being a member here!!! Yah!

your quite an interesting one...

 

[LullaBelle]

wondering why no ACV in heat.mine get it all the time

 

[MMSculpture]

This is my first summer in Arizona with chickens. It's really awful outside and will be 108 everyday this week. My girls are panting all day. I've been misting the coop putting ice in their water. I have a water dish with a brick in it and i hang sheets on the sunny side of the coop. I also give them frozen watermelon and they love grapes.

But I still feel like someones going to croak in this miserable heat! Can they make it though?

 

[kpgoldstar]

This is my first summer in Arizona with chickens. It's really awful outside and will be 108 everyday this week. My girls are panting all day. I've been misting the coop putting ice in their water. I have a water dish with a brick in it and i hang sheets on the sunny side of the coop. I also give them frozen watermelon and they love grapes.

But I still feel like someones going to croak in this miserable heat! Can they make it though?

I am in AZ too and this is my first summer with chickens. We had 109 2 days in a row and it has stayed over 100 for a couple weeks now. I don't have misters and I only put ice blocks in their drinking water. I tried a water dish for them to stand in but they won't do it. Mine have not been panting at all. They do have full shade all day as both the coop and run have a trussed roof. I soak their bedding (straw and sand) in the evenings if it's going to be super hot the next day so they can dig down to the moist cool earth.

I raised mine from chicks hatched in September so they don't know any different. We let them out after work to free range on my lawn and we usually run the sprinklers about 1/2 hour before they come out so the ground is nice and cool on their feet. You may want to check into the AZ thread to see if anyone else has tips for you.

 

[Dumb Kluck]

Northern California foothills see several days over 100 each year, sometimes we get a whole week in triple digits! Once the summer sets in, even our water is lukewarm out of the tap for the rest of the season! I just started dropping a pop bottle full of frozen water into the gallon chick waterers to keep their drinking water cool. It' easy, lasts all day and the bottles can be refrozen each night. We also have a mister hose on a manual timer so that I can go turn the mist on for 15 mins, or a couple of hours at a time. The misters will eventually moisten the straw on the floor of the run but the surface dries quickly (and the evaporation helps cool the ambient air for awhile after the misting stops), but it never gets "wet" because the timer shuts the mist off before saturation occurs.

I wanted to build under the shade of an oak tree out back, but it's too close to the neighbor (and his bb guns & his pit bulls) so I had to move the coop to the opposite end of the yard and they only get morning shade, but the afternoon sun just bakes that area :/ I do have shade screen & roll up shades on the west end of the run to provide shade, the coops west wall is solid wood but the other three sides are layers of wire with shade screen cloth over it for ventilation. The roof of the coop is white metal roofing and is pitched at a good angle to allow heat to rise and escape quickly.

We just had 9 chicks hatch 2 days ago & I'm a little worried about the fluff balls ... since this week is predicted to be triple digits for several days in a row. Mom decided to hatch & raise them on the floor of the secure run and I trust she knows which corner of the chicken fort is best suited to her brood so I'll just let her do her thing.

 

[clove]

I'm also in Arizona. I hang old towels and burlap on the side of the fence where the breeze is and run the sprinkler to saturate them. Usually 10 to 20 min on and 10 to 20 off. The wet fabric keeps things cooler through evaporation. It is extremely dry right now. This method will not work once the monsoons arrive. We are lucky that we have lots of shade trees in the chicken yard.