Four key points to grasp when raising chickens in summer

1. Effective ventilation

Many farmers use improper methods for effective ventilation of chicken coops, for example, installing electric fans inside the coop to blow air directly onto the chickens. In fact, this practice has little cooling effect. Because chickens themselves have no sweat glands, merely blowing air without sweat evaporation cannot carry away heat, and moreover, most of the fans installed are ceiling fans, with wind blowing from top to bottom. This further prevents hot air from rising and hinders the entry of cooler air, causing hot air to circulate inside the coop and more likely raising the ambient temperature. Although some farmers know to blow air from outside inward, or ventilate outward to create air convection, they cannot figure out which fan should blow inward and which fan should blow outward, resulting in poor results. Actually, this is not hard to grasp, because hot air inside the coop flows upward, while cool air flows in the lower area. As long as the fan blowing air into the coop is installed at the lower position, and the upper position exhausts air outward, it will work. This can form effective convection and also carry away part of the heat from the chickens' bodies, producing a very good cooling effect.

2. Spraying water for cooling

Many farmers know that spraying water can cool things down, but they do not know how to apply it. Sometimes the method used is wrong and even produces the opposite effect. First, you should understand the principle of cooling by spraying water. Cooling by spraying water uses the evaporation of liquid water in the air, using the heat absorption of evaporation to cool down, so when spraying water, more consideration should be given to this aspect. First, to use water evaporation, the water should be made into mist. This not only increases the surface area of the water, but also prevents large water droplets from falling onto the chickens, causing stress, or turning them into “drenched chickens.” The time for spraying water should be chosen when the weather is dry, hot, and windy for it to be effective. This is also conducive to water evaporation, and it must not be done in high-temperature, high-humidity “sauna weather.” That would only increase humidity. When the air is saturated with moisture, there is no evaporation, so it cannot achieve a cooling effect and may even have the opposite effect. At such times, it is enough to strengthen effective ventilation.

3. Timely drinking water

Every time high temperatures arrive, some farmers experience chickens dying from lack of water. In addition to common problems such as water shortage, leaks, and blocked water pipes, another important reason is that because the weather is hot, individual chickens monopolize the drinking position. For example, when using hanging bell drinkers, one or two chickens in the flock may climb onto the hanging drinker, and the other chickens cannot drink, causing deaths from lack of water. Therefore, the hotter the weather, the more farmers should frequently observe inside the coop and solve problems promptly when found.

4. Reasonable exercise

In the relatively muggy summer weather, especially before heavy rain or during summer periods of high temperature and high humidity, the air pressure is especially low. If individual chickens squat to one side and remain motionless for a long time, it is very likely to cause death from lack of oxygen. Such situations generally occur in the afternoon or at night. Therefore, at such times, you should frequently observe the chicken coop and make the flock move, which can reduce deaths and lower losses.