We do get some cold in Texas. I went to clean the chicken water and found large ice crystals growing inside.
I have had the large container freeze solid, but haven’t seen these slow growth crystals before, which was neat. I also have a heated water bowl, so the chickens always have thawed water, even when everything else is frozen.
It is hot. Feels like temperatures over 100 F in the afternoons. This time last year I was in a panic trying to keep the chickens cool. I’m a little more calm this year, as I know they use the foot baths to cool down when they are hot! I put gallon containers of water in our freezer, then when it is frozen, take it out before noon to put in the foot baths. By about 3pm, the ice is melted, but not yet hot, so I clean out the yucky water and fill the foot bath (which is a plant drip catcher) with the cool water. When it is exceptionally hot, I’ll put a 16oz frozen water bottle in later in the afternoon. They all look like they’ve gained weight because their feathers are all fluffed out to circulate the air near their skin. Egg production is also down. Hot.
Rest in Peace, Pooh. Yesterday we went to check on the chickens, and Pooh the hen had passed away. She is in the picture above, top left. We figure it was something with her oviduct (an exam of her cloaca revealed a full egg, but it seemed caught in a thick membrane), or it was the heat. My eldest and I are not up for a necropsy, and since Pooh was a healthy weight, my Mom thinks it wasn’t a disease. It was hot that night too.
Ice water is great in the summer, not so great in the winter. We’ve had another cold front bringing sub-freezing temps (again, this is not normal for Texas). During the last freeze the chicken waterer outside froze, but the inside waterer was OK. Not this time. After breaking out the ice twice in an hour I headed to the farm store for a solution.
I found a heated dog water dish for about $20! (There was a chicken set up, but the warmer and the metal waterer together was over $80.) I was again very thankful that my husband installed power in the coop, and put outlets on three walls, inside and out. The outside outlet is in a perfect place to plug in the water dish.
I’m still quite good at freaking out the chickens, like by carrying a ladder around a corner. But I am improving because I noticed the freak out, stopped, waited for them to stop bouncing off the poultry wire and put themselves away in the coop before I took the big scary ladder in the run. The heated water dish fit where the hanging waterer was, so I moved the hanging waterer over a bit (which is why I needed the ladder).
The bowl had a thermostat that only heats the water if it is cold enough to freeze. The next morning showed that it worked! And I witnessed a chicken drinking from the new bowl. Phew!
I’m so excited! We went to the hardware store and in the garden center they had 17” plant coasters, which are bigger than my current foot baths (cupcake holder top and bottom). The plant coasters are made of a sturdier plastic too. I took them out to the chickens, but left the old foot baths because the chickens are usually wary of new things, and I didn’t want them to overheat for fear of a new foot bath. I didn’t need to worry, they stepped right in (but not for the video, figures).
Since I filled all four with water, rather than dump out the old foot baths (they will never hold cupcakes again anyway), I’ll observe which dishes get the dirtiest which should tell me which foot baths the chickens prefer. Another impromptu experiment!
I also figured out that the hose reaches into the coop, which makes rinsing out the foot baths much quicker and easier. Better late than never.
at the top of the bottles before you freeze them.
Two of my water jugs developed leaks because the expansion of the ice popped the seams on the bottom. I learned the hard way to leave a sufficient air gap when filling them with water so the ice has room to expand. So I am now doing an experiment with different plastic drinking bottles to see which ones hold up to freezing. (It just happened that I am out of water jugs, and I had a variety of plastic bottles in the car. This is not really a planned experiment, but we will make the most of what we have.)
I like freezing the gallon jugs because the ice lasts a long time, even in the Texas heat. The smaller drinking bottles won’t be frozen as long, but they will last longer than regular sized ice cubes.
Critters and Craft 