Guess what?
It is gonna be really hot next week!
I always worry about our critters when it gets over 95 degrees…especially for extended periods of time. I find myself doing a “health & safety” check every few hours throughout the day. For the goats, that pretty much just means plenty of fresh water. I know, it is almost always about the goats…but today we are gonna have some fowl talk. What do we do here at Jollity Farm to keep our chickens as comfortable as they can be in the 100 degree heat?
Chickens and Heat Stress
Chickens cannot sweat to cool down like humans do. Chickens pant to keep cool. Panting is the first sign you will see that tells you they need shade and water. With heat stress, they are open mouth panting while spreading their wings and squatting close to the ground. They are trying to lose heat by adjusting their feather position.
What are the immediate signs of heat stress? We watch for:
• Gasping and panting
• Spreading wings
• Lethargic and droopy acting
• Extremely pale cones and wattles
• Closed eyes
• Lying down
more long term signs of heat stress:
• Drop in egg production
• Reduced egg size, egg weight, and poor shell quality
• Increased thirst
• Decreased appetite
• Lost body weight
Tips for Keeping Your Chickens Cool?
I have found that the BEST thing you can do to help chickens in hot weather is to provide them cool and/or damp soil in the shade. Sprinklers are great to wet down the area. Keep in mind when you do this that the WILL dig holes :) but that is kinda the idea. So if you want the hole in a specific area, wet down that area and not the entire chicken run. Some folks like to use misters. Misters can potentially bring down the temperature in a very limited area, but they make you feel better than they make the chickens feel. The damp soil the misters create is better for birds to cool themselves. Fans might feel good to you, too, but they dont help chickens to cool down.
I have found the best thing I can do on really hot days is to give them a mud puddle to stand in! and yes, they will stand in the water.
• Fresh, clean water access, but water is not enough.
• You can cool the water down—Add ice cubes or blocks of ice to their water.
• Fruit or veggie cubes—Besides placing blocks of ice in their water, we place strawberries, or grapes, or corn in muffin pans, fill with water, and freeze. We then add the ice cubes to their water pan. They love pecking at the colorful cubes at they float in the water.
• Water is not enough—Providing water is not enough if your chickens are heat stressed. Water intensifies the problem by stimulating the loss of electrolytes: birds drink more, increasing wet droppings, which causes electrolyte loss and hastens dehydration. When it is really hot out, we add a homemade electrolyte solution to their water (or you can add Pedialyte or Gatorade).
What do we use here at Jollity? We add to each gallon of water:
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon Morton's Lite Salt (salt and potassium chloride)
1 tablespoon sugar
You dont have to give it all day, but if you give it once a day it will help.