They’ve been promising this for the past week.
Uncle Joel’s going to spend the majority of his waking hours for the next week hiding from the sun. Because those are the temps in the shade, and there ain’t a lot of shade we didn’t make ourselves.
I’d afternoon over at Ian’s place, but wouldn’t you know something died in there and damned if I can find the corpse. Oh well, it’s a nearly annual thing. You bet we’re gonna sweat, but I’ve got lots of drinking water and no special will to activity in the afternoon anyway.
Landlady made a suggestion I’m going to try; the chickens all hide under the coop in the heat of the day, and they’ve been acting kind of stressed again. I’ve frozen a gallon jug of water I’m going to put down there with them to see if it improves anything.
I imagine the chickens will eventually acclimate themselves. There were birds before there was refrigeration to keep them cool.
It probably will. So would an electric fan. Is there enough shaded space for them to spread out away from each other as they would in the wild? Chickens produce a lot of body heat. If the coop supports are on the surface and not in the ground, and if you have any kind of air movement, is the coop open space underneath oriented now or could it be to take advantage of whatever through air flow there is? Contact with cool dirt would help too, if there is any. Or you could implement the old fashioned human powered paper fan…and post photos.
Zelda, the coop is up on concrete posts. I have trouble crawling under there, but the chickens don’t. And they dig themselves nice cool hollows.
It’s in the mid/hi eighties with the humidity here. Don’t know whether it should be “the summer’s here, yeh!” or “The summer’s here, crap!”
Have you considered a rig like the Pepino swamp cooler built by John Wells?
http://thefieldlab.blogspot.com/2010/05/close-cooling.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/texasdesertlife/sets/72157605888462649/
runs on solar/12 volts
OK second try.. seems it did not like the links the first time.
Have you tried a rig like a Pepino Swamp cooler as John Wells built himself?
He runs on 12 volts/solar
try:
thefieldlab dot blogspot dot com/2010/05/close-cooling dot html
and;
www dot flickr dot com/photos/texasdesertlife/sets/72157605888462649/