Shade for chickens

  

I really hope we are ready for tomorrow's extreme heat ...  We have prepared as much as we could to keep the chickens safe; they are the only ones vulnerable, everyone else (dogs, cat, people) can stay in the nice cool air-conditioned rooms inside.

Problem is we have a couple of hours around the middle of the day when there is really hardly any shade anywhere in the backyard.

It's going to be around 43ºC (109ºF)! tomorrow ...

On the weekend, after searching through numerous forums and chook sites to find good solutions, we have decided on a few things.

First, we decided to install some heat reflecting cover over the chooks 'day house' which is inside the north side boundary fence.  We were planning to use something like the windscreen shades with that silvery coating, except we needed a whole big sheet; about 2m by 3m.

Couldn't find any in the camping shops or hardware.

But, at Bunnings, at the building insulation isle we found a kind of silver coated sheeting called SilverWrap, 1.30m wide and almost 30m long.  For about $50.

It looked just the thing we needed.  We bought some double sided tape for fixing it to the fence.

At home we laid it out and cut two pieces each 3.5m in length.

Laying out the SilverWrap

Two pieces are cut off

Long edges are overlapped and fixed together with double sided tape (it actually came from my sewing box and was used to fix clothing)

Cut edge tidied up

Fixed it to top of fence with industrial double sided tape

The bottom is simply secured on the ground with bricks

The sheet covers the day house with plenty of overhang at each end. There is enough room for the 4 chooks we think if they are stuck there for the day.

The chickens seem to like their new improved day house.  It must be much cooler than before.

some other things we can do:

• putting large blocks of ice in their water
• watering frequently around them to wet the ground
• put water in trays as wading pools although my chooks don't seem to like this
• cold watermelon or cottage cheese (they love this!)
• putting frozen water bottles around their house so they can sit near them
• if humidity is low, dip them in a bucket of cool (not icy!) water for about half a minute max.  Don't do it when it's humid!! They can get sick!

As a last resort if nothing will seem to work I will bring them inside in the laundry.

But the best would be - and I've made a mental note of this in case we ever move - to have the chook run and house under the shade of decidious trees (they breath a lot and cool the air more) and other plants, maybe even in two layers if possible.