New to Chickens in Texas

[DelaneE]

Our Girls aren't free range too many loose dogs on our County Road... Our property is completely fenced in with pasture fencing, which keeps in our large dog, but others seem to make it inside... they are super dedicated to chasing my horses.

So, I just wouldn't feel good about letting the girls (and maybe one boy, still questionable) out. However, they do have a large shady outside run that gets quite a bit of nice breeze.

As to the frozen water bottle discussion... I can do this on the weekend, but I work full time M-F and its quite a commute, so sadly, I can't skip home at lunch and change out to a freshly frozen water bottle, or give them a fresh cold watermelon, so a fan will have to suffice for now. We keep cheap box fans up in the barn for the horses during the summer heat, and yes, they do get dusty and gross, but I just take them down occassionally and blow them off with the air compressor (just to get rid of the majority of the junk

) so that they don't become a fire hazard. These fans tend to last a few years before they totally give out. So I was thinking, attach one of those to the outside of the coop, with the air flow coming right into the window... so that it is blowing in fresh air, and blowing out the otherside of the coop.

Now for my new issue, we haven't gotten our coop completely set-up yet, it is a work-in-progress,

and still dosn't have electricity, which would mean that we would have to run an extension cord out there for the fan... Our dog, a lab, who is a little more than a year old chews up EVERYTHING that he can reach, so I'm worried about having an extension cord in the yard. I'm still thinking about how I want to handle this situation. Hopefully I can figure out something workable before this weekend!

Have a good one!
Delane