How to Help Your Chickens Survive the Heat.
It’s hot 43 and climbing. Make sure your chooks have cold water in this weather – they cool themselves by drinking cold and expelling it out in their manure. If their drinking water is hot, they will not drink it. Not drinking can result in the loss of your chickens.
Wet the earth and soil in their pen so they can get down in the wet earth and dust. Also make sure they have cool water where they are as we have lost hens who have not gone back 5 metres to their pen and the water.
It is okay to run the sprinkler on and off during the day to cool the chickens (adhering to water restrictions). It’s okay to wet chickens and if needed dunk them into a bucket of cool water to cool them off.
We freeze cups of ice to put in their waterers. We find even the little chicks in this heat want cold water and have found them sitting in their waterer or using the cold waterer on legs to pop under.