Beating the Heat: Help Your Birds Stay Cool in the Summer

Summer heat can be brutal—but your poultry don’t have to suffer through it. In this episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast, host Rip Stalvey shares real-world, down-home strategies to help your flock stay cool, safe, and productive during the hottest months of the year. 

From water and shade solutions to ventilation tricks, frozen treats, low-sodium electrolytes, and breed choices that beat the heat—this episode is packed with practical advice tailored for backyard and small flock poultry keepers. Whether you're just starting out or you've been raising chickens for decades, you'll come away with tools and tips that could save lives, eggs, and peace of mind.

Visit www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com to listen now, full podcast episodes and for more bonus content, and lot’s more small flock education. 

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Transcript

Rip Stalvey: 0:00

Here's some more bonus content for the Poultry Keepers podcast. I'm your host Rip Stalvey, and today we're going to be talking about helping your birds beat the heat and stay cool during the summer. That's something that every one of us who's ever kept chickens has had to deal with. When hot weather sets in, it's just uncomfortable for us, but it can really take a toll on our birds. Heat stress is real and if we don't stay ahead of it, it can cost us our birds, health, productivity, and sometimes even their lives. So today, i'll be talking about how to help your flock, beat the heat and stay healthy, safe, and going strong all summer long. Let's start with what heat stress really is. Now, chickens don't sweat like we do. They try to cool off by panting, dissipating heat through their comb and wattles and spreading their wings. But once the temperatures reach 85 to 90 degrees, especially with high humidity, we often see during the summer their bodies struggle to keep up Early signs are easy to miss. Your birds might be quieter, might be hanging back a little bit, or even going off their feed slightly. Then it gets more obvious. They hold their wings out. They start panting heavily. They don't move around much, and in the worst cases, birds collapse or even die from heat stroke. That's what we're trying to avoid. Heat doesn't just hurt birds physically. It can mess with the productivity too. Egg numbers will drop, eggshells can thin out growth, slows down fertility falls. Hatchability can even go down and even the birds that seem okay may be struggling under the surface. The very first thing to think about is water. On hot days chickens can drink twice as much as they usually do, so be sure you offer more of it and you need to make sure it's cool, clean, kept in the shade, and it's easy for them to access. Don't just put out one waterer and hope it lasts, add extras. Placing them in a shady spot, refill them more often. You can even freeze small plastic bottles of water and drop them into the water to help keep the water there. Cool. Low sodium poultry, electrolytes are a huge help. They replace what birds lose through panting and help with hydration. Now, you don't need to use them every day, but on those high heat index days, offer a fresh batch with electrolytes in the morning and check that water a couple of times a day. Now if you wanna make your own electrolytes, there's a recipe in the Poultry Keepers podcast, Facebook group's file section. If your birds don't have shade, they need it. It can bring temps down by 10 to 15 degrees almost instantly. Natural shade from trees is great, but if you don't have that, get creative. Put a tarp over part of the run. Use a popup canopy, use an old sheet or shade cloth. You want to create several shaded areas that move with the sun throughout the day. You can even plant tall crops like corn or sunflowers along the edge of your run to create what I like to call living shade. Birds love poking around beneath those leaves and it cools the ground beneath them. Now inside the coop, light colored roofing ventilation gaps near the ceiling, maybe even reflective insulation under the roof deck. All of these help the coop keep from turning into an oven. You don't want dead airspace inside a hot coop. A box fan, oscillating fan, or even a solar powered unit can keep the air moving and help your birds cool down. Mount the fan up high and aim it across the roost area or down low where the birds gather. Always use safe electrical cords and don't leave exposed wires or plugs. Here's a tip. Try suspending a frozen jug of water from the ceiling and let your fan blow across it. It'll cool the air like a mini swamp cooler. It's low tech, but it's effective. If your coop has windows on both sides, open them up for a cross ventilation, and make sure you've got strong wire like hardware, cloth, not flimsy screen wire to keep the predators out. You want your birds safe, cool, and secure. Now if you're off grid, solar fans are a great option these days. Look for one with a battery backup or a USB charging port so it can run even when the sun dips low. Now, let's talk about something folks often overlook and that's feeding. Digestion creates heat, so feeding birds in the hottest part of the day makes them even hotter. Instead, offer feed late in the evening. That gives him energy during the cooler hours and lets him process it before the real heat starts to set in. Skip those high carb snacks, like scratch grains and cracked corn during peak heat. Instead, go with something like hydrating fruits, like watermelon, cucumbers, or even cold leafy greens. Some folks I those freeze veggies into ice cube trays and offer those as an enrichment treat. Also, consider increasing the protein levels slightly when the temperatures spike because your birds are naturally going to eat less when the temperatures are high. Birds get cranky in the heat just like we do, and that stress can cause squabbles or pecking order issues. So keep an eye out for that. Make sure there's enough space, multiple shaded areas and more than one water source. So dominant birds don't block the shy ones. Give birds frozen treats for fun and function, try frozen peas, cubes of yogurt or frozen fruit wedges. You can also hose down one shady corner of the run. Just use a light mist, not a soaking, but you want to create a cooler dust bathing spot. A dry shady dust bath helps regulate your body temperatures and keeps feathers conditioned. It's really not a luxury, it's a need. Finally, let's think about the big picture. Plan for summer's heat. You can start now by planting shade trees, upgrading ventilation, investing in solar fans. You know the future you and your birds will thank you. If you're building a new coop. Face it away from the afternoon sun and build was airflow in mind. Think about natural ventilation, reflective roofing, and shade from day one. And don't forget to be kind to yourself because managing birds through heat is tough. Do the best you can with what you've got and know that even small changes can make a big difference. That's going to do it for today. I hope this gave you some fresh ideas and a bit of confidence going into summer. Your birds depend on you, and with the right tools and the little prep, you can help them thrive during the hottest month of the year. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow poultry keeper. Or better yet, leave a review because that helps new poultry keepers find us and be sure to swing by our website www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com for more resources and bonus content. Thanks for joining me today. I enjoyed our visit and I hope you did too. Until next time. Keep learning, keep improving. Keep enjoying the birds you love. And above all else, make sure you and your birds stay cool! I'll catch y'all next time