Question Regarding Severe Weather and Chickens

[Mallory]

Quote:
I'm curious if you are in Ohio....

Last June we got hit with an F4 and found out a later that there were two of them. We are literally less than a minute down the road of houses that were completely decimated. 7 people were killed. We were lucky. The only problem we had was a flooded basement due to loss of power for so long.

Here's some photos I took a couple days later.

No chickens here, but our dog was kept in the garage in her crate. I argued with hubs about it, but in the end it wasn't worth the risk of going up from the basement to get her.

Hopefully this year we will have no more close encounters like that, but I have already thought it through about what I'll be doing. If I have ample warning I will hitch up the chicken tractor and move it into our pole barn. It would at least protect it from the high winds better than if I left it to fair for itself. If that pole barn gets it, its likely all over anyhow.

If out of the blue we hear the sirens go off, we're grabbing the kids and booking it to the basement, like we did last year. And no, even if the weather seems docile enough to wander upstairs and check on something or grab something, I will NOT allow it. That is exactly how one family lost their husband/father in June. He was headed up the basement stairs to check on their generator (and the dog I believe) and before he was even all the way up the stairs, he, along with the rest of the house above, was ripped away.

The whole tornado thing really worries me now, more than it ever did before, because they are so much more real to me now. Seeing tornado damage in pictures or on tv is NOTHING like seeing it with your own eyes. Also, my hubs has just become a volunteer firefighter, so if there storms he's likely going out in them. I can't imagine what a mess I'll be.

 

[mariel37]

Of course family comes first - we don't really need to say that - but I am assuming that there are warnings ahead of time.

I would grab the chickens, the dogs, and everybody else and go to a safe place. Unfortunately, there are no basements here in central Florida, which unnerves me a lot (having grown up in "Tornado Alley"), but there aren't many tornadoes here either. With hurricanes, we get plenty of warning.

Unfortunately, the horses have to stay out in the field.

 

[ChickenAlgebra]

We get tornados here. The horrible one that took out a town, plus some old trees and fences for us, we did as always. 4 legs are out, where they can run if needed. Birds are penned, but not in coop. The banty coop was smashed, all but one was fine.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Our coop is hurricane anchored down and rated to stay put up to 150mph winds, all of our out buildings are anchored this way (actually have to do or risk them being gone). With adding ducks and geese recently I have one stall that is being fitted with breeding cages/pens so the call ducks and others can be put inside. Our feed house is being fitted with hooks for the rabbit cages to be hung from and large floor pens for the geese and great pyrenees to in. If a hurricane is coming this is the best we can do for them.

I did recently find a place online where I can order leg bands for everyone and have the farm name and phone number put on them.

 

[Uzuri]

Warnings are never issued with enough time to save anything or anyone not already within striking distance of the basement. You've got minutes, tops. With as fast as the storms that hit the eastern US moved this time around you were lucky if you had that -- last Wednesday's storm (F0 and F2 confirmed in the county I live in), the siren went off and the storm hit within 2 minutes -- these storms were moving at 75 MILES PER HOUR (normal around here for severe storms is 30mph). I didn't even make it down to the first floor in that amount of time (it was nighttime). If we'd have been in the path of the F2, I'd have been screwed.

My cats spend every night in the basement, so they're always prepared; with the dog it's open the crate door as you're running down the steps and she follows you. If bad storms are predicted in the daytime I make sure my hens are locked up -- that won't save them from a direct hit, but it will protect them from flying debris -- and of course they're always locked up at night. But running out to try and rescue them would certainly be grounds for a Darwin Award.