A hot day for the chooks

Obviously, I have only just started blogging.  I am still trying to sort out how it all works (including photos, customised headings etc etc), so I am still in amateur hour!  Please visit again in a couple of weeks when I am up and running properly!

It's been hot and humid day today, so our chickens are keeping to their well-loved shady spots around the house. It means there will be more poop to clean off the concrete at the end of the day, but I’d rather that than worry about whether they are cool enough. In our first summer with chickens, we had a ridiculously hot 45°C (113°F) day. The chickens were panting like crazy and we were making sure they all had plenty of water. But the day was so hot that the water was very quickly quite warm. What we hadn’t realised was that chickens don’t drink warm water – they would rather die – literally! I guess we were lucky that only 1 chicken succumbed and died of heat stroke that day. So now we are super vigilant that the water is kept COLD – water from the fridge is used to top up the several 2-litre ice-cream containers dotted around the yard in chooks’ favoured hide-outs to keep them drinking.

The chooks sheltering at the back door with the water bowl