Two Chickens Dead.

[ryan112ryan]

So I have raised chickens for 3 years now, never had one die on me, but in the past month I have had two Plymouth Barred Rocks (1.5 years old) die on me. Both were fully intact, inside their pens, plenty of food and water. Both occasions They were positioned under the shade of a tree, we use chicken tractors, they are moved to fresh grass daily, pens cleaned daily, fed daily, tended daily, give fresh water daily.

Below is a picture of the coops we use, they stay in these full time, its about 80 square feet for 4 birds (20 sq/ft per bird). They don't really pick on each other and we have had them for a long time.

At first I was worried that it might be a disease, I checked for mites, checked their bodies for other signs but nothing seemed obvious (though I don't have much experience with poultry diseases). No new chickens have been brought in for over a year and when we did, we quarantined them for 3 months.

I think it might be the heat, but I don’t know what else to do. We place their coops under tree shade every day and then the coops provide additional shading, they have all the water they could ever want at all times, they have good ventilation. I put the weather record for our area, Charlotte NC, for the past month below.

Am I missing something? Should I be checking for something? Should I be doing something different? If it is the heat, what can I practically do?



Weather in our area for about the past month.

 

[sourland]

Although you place he tractors under the trees, are they in full sun at any time? If so I think the temperature in the tracctor will be far above the ambient temperatre. I think the tarp covering will hold heat in the tractor. Temperatures HAVE been outrageous this summer.

 

[Mtn Laurel]

Just looking at your tarp and am wondering if the reflective side is down. The way I understand it - at least, the way my husband explained it - is that the silver reflective side should be facing up to reflect the sun. With the dark side up, it holds the heat.

I'm in VA and we've had the same 104 degree days and it's been brutal. We put a large fan at one end of our coop. The girls love it and I'll find them all crowding around standing in front of it. On the hottest of days I will put my hose on mist and spray it in front of the fan so it blows back into the coop. The girls aren't crazy about it but it does cool them off.

 

[oliver27]

I did this and it helped. Put some containers of frozen water in there. ( empty 2 liters bottles of soda, empty milk cartons) i did this and they laid against them, also a fan helps.

 

[ryan112ryan]

Oh I should note we flipped the tarps in the summer so the side facing out is silver to reflect the heat. This picture was in the winter, so we wanted to absorb the heat, hence the brown side out.

The back yard has pretty good shade over the whole area, if the coop was in direct sun, it wasn't much or for very long, plus they had the tarp shading them the whole time.