Summertime is great! It’s time for us to go swimming at the beach, get some refreshing sunbathing. However, summer can bring too much pressure with the sun shines so strikingly hot. Any living things can get heat stroke with too much exposure from the sun. So are chicken. If they’re sea turtle, they can just dive under water and get away from the sun, but unfortunately they can’t. Heat stroke can lead them to die, so you need to learn how to keep your chicken cool during summertime.
- Signs Your Chicken Get Heat Stroke
You cannot simply see when your chicken get heat stroke. If human get the heat stroke, you can see from the redness of the skin, but chicken don’t have the same complexion as us. They are covered in feathers with many colors. No worries, the signs of heat stroke in chicken is totally observable.
Usually, chicken only open the beak when they’re fighting or making a sound. So, it’s pretty unusual for them to keep their beak open. It’s one of the signs of your chicken get heat stroke. And it can be followed with panting, like they need more intake of the air.
- Lying on the Ground with the Wings Open
Chicken love to take a dust bath, sometime they can just lie down and rest on the hole they dig on the ground. So, it’s pretty common for them lying on the ground. You just need to watch out if they start doing it with their wings open. Your chicken might get heat stroke if they do that.
I think it’s pretty obvious, because any living things will look tired and low in energy if they lack of water.
If you caught your chicken lack of appetite and keep drinking, it might be the sign of the heat stroke. Of course, you need to observe other signs, because it can be the sign of another disease.
Keeping Your Chicken Cool
Don’t wait until you see those signs I mentioned above before you take an action. You should know already when the summertime comes and thus can prevent them to suffer from sun shine. Of course, it takes a bit of a work, because your chicken might be stressed out if you keep them in the cage, even with the air conditioning on.
So, here’s some tips on how to keep your chicken cool during summertime that you can follow :
1. Check the Ventilation in the Coop
You might be getting tired of this talk already, but ventilation, whether it’s in dry or when chicken in the wet weather, important for your chicken. So, when the summertime gets closer, check the ventilation in your chicken coop or cage.
2. Provide Fresh Water
When the sun strikes so strong, it’s important to provide your chicken with the fresh water. You know, in the heat, water can become warm and it’s not really helping your chicken to fight the heat. So, you need to change the water in the coop regularly to keep their water fresh.
3. Give Your Chicken Cold Water
If the temperature gets too hot, you can simply put ice blocks in the chicken’s waterer. Of course, in the different place from the fresh water. However hot, you can’t always guarantee the ice blocks can melt right away. However, once they melt, they can really help to cool down your chicken.
4. Frozen Treats Never Too Much
As we like ice cream in the hot day, chicken will love to have frozen treats during summertime, too. You can cut your chicken’s favorite fruit into small pieces and freeze them for couple of hours in the freezer. Now, you can give them a very delicious treat that can save their life, too!
5. Ensure Your Chicken Can Get the Dust Bath
The dust bath is full of benefit for chicken. They can make them happy, can get rid of parasites from their body and even can cool them down. So, you need to ensure that they have place to get dust bath in your backyard, for instance. If you don’t have enough room for that, you can provide a special place for them to play around in the dust.
6. Make Them a Mud Bath
If you look closer at javanese rhino, you will know they love mud! In the other hand , chicken don’t really like to cover in watery places, but under heat of the sun, it’s a different story. They will be happy to get into the mud or puddles with water to soak their feet. This way, they can cool themselves down, too.
7. Keep the Coop Cool
To ensure that your chicken is cool down during summer time takes your time to observe and take care of them. But, sometimes you need to take some rest too, right? Besides, you might have any other schedule outside of your house and your chicken farm. With air conditioning in chicken coop, you can get away for a while. Besides air conditioning, you can put fans or water misters. Water misters can really relieve your chicken from heat, but still prevent your coop becomes damp and watery. The damp coop can create bad odors. Even though you can totally eliminate the bad odors in your chicken coop, but it’s totally waste of time!
8. Give Shade
Yes, I see your coop is already have roof to keep the sunshine strikes directly into your chicken. However, the sunshine can still go into the coop and warm up your chicken. It can make them feel hot when they’re in their nesting boxes. That’s why you can put shade above their nesting boxes to prevent the sun shines directly towards them. Besides, you don’t want they to stop producing eggs, right?
9. Water Bath
Once in a while, when it’s strikingly hot, you can dip your chicken in the water. In the cold weather, chicken need to stay away from water and rain, but in the hot weather, it becomes important for them. You just need to remember when you do it, you only dip their body, with the neck and head keep away from the water. After that, you can just gently to rub their feathers in the same direction with the growth of the feathers by the towel. You don’t need to absorb all the water and make them dry, otherwise just let them in the damp condition.
10. Put Frozen Bottles of Water Near the Nesting Boxes
Even though you already put some shade over the nesting boxes, it doesn’t mean that the heatwaves stop. So, to make your chicken more comfortable, you can put frozen bottles of water near the nesting boxes. It can cool them down and make they sit comfortably in their nesting boxes.
So, you’re ready for summertime! If you keep observing your chicken, however hot this summer is, you can still let your chicken cool down. Let me know what you think about these 10 tips on how to keep your chicken cool during summer time!