These three gossips are keeping cool.
If you’re thinking of raising chickens, one important thing to consider is how to keep them comfortable on hot days as well as cold days.
We’ve had some hot weather during the last five or so years, but we haven’t lost a single bird to heat, even when it got to 117F (47C). I had friends who lost at least half their flock that roasting weekend, but our hens did fine. What did we do right? And how can we help other chicken keepers?
Read on for some advice on what birds to raise, small things you can do to help them on hot days, and even plants to grow around your chicken coop to help your hens stay cool.
Chickens can be sensitive to the heat, depending on their breed, size, and even color. If you live in a hot climate, for example, it makes sense to raise smaller, lighter-colored breeds. Animals with a larger surface area to volume ratio seem to do better than bulky animals with a smaller surface area relative to volume. The larger relative surface area of the smaller animal can help it let out the heat. And if it sounds silly to worry about color, consider this: someone once gifted me with two lovely big black hens (Black Orpingtons), and as soon as the temperature got above 80F, they were panting from the heat, while the rest of my chickens, who were mostly yellow or tan, and only a bit smaller, were still comfortable. Dark colors absorb heat. And if you live in a cold climate, bigger birds with dark feathers are a good choice.
This ameraucana hen is light colored and not very large, and she handles hot weather pretty well.
Try to choose your chicken breeds to suit your climate.
These hens love their watermelon!
Assuming you’ve now got your chickens, whatever the breed, there are some things you can do for them when hot weather arrives.
One thing you can do is simply bring them a bowl full of ice and cold water. Drinking this will help them cool off from the inside. You can also bring them a cold watermelon. I know this may feel like a sacrifice, so just give them half! Chickens love watermelon, and it will help them stay hydrated while cooling them off a bit. Cold cucumbers can help too.
But if it gets blistering hot, ice water and cold melon or cucumber won’t be enough. We installed misters along the inside of the fence around our chicken yard. Here’s a link to the one like ours: https://amzn.to/4giGDho
The chickens all lined up in front of the mist-emitting nozzles, as if they were lined up for a military roll call. It was entertaining to watch. It worked well!
The chickens start lining up when the misters turn on.
There are also things you can do in your garden, especially around your hen yard, to help your birds stay cool.
You can plant shade for them. The plants you choose can serve many functions: they shade your hens, they look and smell good, they may feed your hens a little, and you may get a harvest. We’ve planted rose bushes, climbing roses, hops, and honeysuckles around our hen house. The vines grow over the top of the yard – we have posts that hold up netting to keep out birds of prey. (Unfortunately, we can’t free range our hens, as we have LOTS of wildlife.) While the rose bushes give shade from the side, the vines put a green roof over the birds.
The roses smell good, and I harvest some of the hops for herbal medicine. I also make honeysuckle honey with the honeysuckle flowers – just steep them in honey, and soon you will have a delicious sweetener. Occasionally the hens nab some hops or a rose, and sometimes I toss aromatic rose petals into the hen house and the hen yard.
But there are other things you can plant around your hen yard.
How about a kiwi? We have hardy kiwis in the Pacific Northwest, and if you live further south, you have more kiwi options. Grapes, thornless blackberry, and Passion Fruit (Maypop in the Northwest) are all good choices, yielding fruit for you as well as for the chickens. The grape has the advantage of being a sturdy plant that will hopefully live for many decades, and you can even use the leaves when you ferment cucumbers (grape leaves or horseradish leaves help to keep the cucumbers from getting mushy). All of these plants are deciduous, so the hens will also get a little more sun in the winter, when they need it.
Honeysuckles and roses give the chickens in this chicken yard plenty of shade.
Finally, if you haven’t built your hen house and enclosure yet, think carefully about where to put it, if you have the space for more than one option. Ours backs up against bamboo on the south side, not only giving shade to the hens, but also providing habitat and shelter to many other animals, especially our outdoor cats.
When you choose your location and setup, try to imagine that each element serves more than one function: the plants give shade, provide beauty, feed the chickens, and feed you.
Dudley the giant rooster watches over the hens.
Think of a network of all the elements working together: in our yard, the bamboo on the south side of the coop shades the chickens from the southern sun, provides habitat, and provides bamboo poles for staking beans or cucumbers, and the chickens make fertilizer for all the plants, which in turn feed the chickens, protect them from wind, and give them shade. (Make sure to let your chicken manure sit in a pile for a year to “cool off”, as it’s considered too “hot” to put directly around plants.) The compost pile is near the chickens, making coop cleaning easy. In some really cold climates, people put the compost VERY close to the henhouse, as it gives off heat. Others have put their chickens in a greenhouse!
If you implement these strategies mentioned above, you should be able to prevent your chickens from overheating, and you may end up with a more beautiful chicken yard! Everybody wins, and your chickens will hopefully thank you by laying eggs.
Lulubelle is a watermelon aficionado.
Just to let my readers know: I’m an Amazon affiliate, and I get a small commission when people purchase the items linked in the article.
