Poultry Keepers Podcast

Beat the Heat: Proven Ways to Prevent Heat Stress in Your Birds-Part 1

• Rip Stalvey • Season 3 • Episode 125

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Hot weather can spell disaster for your flock if you're not prepared. In Part 1 of Beat the Heat, Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon join us for a no-fluff, practical conversation about what poultry heat stress really is, how it affects your birds, and the proactive steps small flock keepers can take to reduce risk.

We cover:

  • What defines heat stress and when it becomes dangerous
  • How to spot early warning signs before birds crash
  • Proven shade and ventilation strategies
  • Real-world success with misting systems, fans, and frozen water tricks
  • The role of nutrition: high-fat diets, vitamin C, and reducing corn
  • How to keep water cool and palatable during extreme temps
  • Tips for birds stuck at shows or in fair cages
  • Debunking myths about apple cider vinegar in hot weather

Whether you're raising show birds, backyard layers, or a mixed flock, this episode gives you real-life solutions to help your poultry thrive through summer’s toughest days.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2 next week.
Listen now at: www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com

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Alex:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon explain how you can help prevent heat stress in your birds so they can beat the heat this summer. This is the audio recording of a recent Poultry Keepers 360 Livestream. Now here's Jeff and Carey.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're if I tell you the truth, I'm dragging butt, I'm still trying to figure out how to sleep on a US schedule again, but it's okay. It's all right. Okay, good. It's getting better. Every day. Takes about 10 days, two weeks.

Carey Blackmon:

Good evening everyone. Rick's unable to make, to meet with us tonight. He has, he's taking care of Mary. She is doing to be expected and things are going as they should. Doctors aren't getting them information as fast as they would like, but aside from that, things are going. We did check in with him and talk about her earlier today, so just wanted to get that out of the way. Settle your nerves. Tonight we are gonna talk about beating the heat. Obviously, unless you're one of our friends, like we talked to the other week that's up in Canada, who's still having some really awkwardly hot temperatures, it's hot everywhere. I talked to a friend of mine in I, Indiana. Yeah. Indiana, earlier day, and it was like 95. So it is hot everywhere. So tonight we're gonna talk about beating the heat. Proven ways to prevent heat stress in your birds. How's that sound, Joe?

Jeff Mattocks:

Sounds good to me.

Carey Blackmon:

So we're gonna start with the basics. And chickens, they don't sweat like people do. Internal temperature averages from 104 to 107, so they're already hotter. One of the reasons why they stay warmer in the wintertime than we actually think they do. They're already hotter in the summertime. So with that, we don't want them to get hotter. They're gonna be flaring their wings, they're gonna be doing all that kind of stuff. They're gonna pant, I, we're all human. I, the other day, a week and a half ago, I was outside for a couple hours, drank half a gallon of water. I'm still paying. Jeff how do you think would be some good ways to first let, how would you define heat stress? What would you say the scientific definition of heat stress is?

Jeff Mattocks:

Geez, I don't know. Nobody's ever farm that question. Yeah. I. Pretty much when you have when your day night temperatures like, and I explained this to a guy earlier today, right? You take your daytime, your nighttime low, your daytime high, you add the two together, right? And you divide by two and. I'm looking at your 24 hour ambient temperature, right? Yep. If you're a hundred during the day and you're 80 at night, that's 180, you're at 90 degree average. You need to do something at 90 degree average. I should slow down. Not everyone does math. The same as I do.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. But we have learned that a lot lately.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay. Anyway, sorry. Pretty much when you're 80 plus, 85 plus, we need to start looking for ways to make the birds a little bit more comfortable. And we've talked about it a lot over the years on the show, individually with people in the groups, there's a lot of things you can do. Okay. I can run right down through the checklist if you like, but number one is shade. Two, you try and orient your pens or whatever's holding your birds to capture as much natural airflow as there can be. And I realize there's days here coming up in August, right? The air don't move and it just, sits there and bakes you. So shade, capture as much airflow as you can. You can even consider getting some of the big livestock fans, they make four foot fans, right? So if your birds are in a housed area, right? You don't have'em out on runs where they can get shade and. Fresh air or moving air you gotta invest in fans. And nowadays you can do fans with misters, right? You can put little Mister Kits on the front of those fans and it's not, it ain't rocket science. And you can, you can move almost like a homemade swamp cooler. So

Carey Blackmon:

look, so last year when we talked about that. I got the idea. I looked on Amazon, which is one of my favorite places to look for stuff because I don't have any, I don't have a gardening shop, gardening supply house local to me. So I got one of the kits, a pressure reducer to drop your hose pipe pressure down to 25 pounds, and I think it had 200 feet of quarter inch tube in it. A bunch of tees. And little Mr. Nozzle to go on the other part of the tee. And what I did was I ran part of it through my fence area and then I just started running it through my breeder pins up towards the top. And once I got it in place, throughout everything, which took most of the 200 feet I just went back and zip tied on the wire. The hose to keep it in place. And then I cut a notch, put my key in there with the connections and my birds. I put the garden hose thing on a timer to have it come on from 11 to one 30 in the afternoon. And they're,

Jeff Mattocks:

yeah. The first time, first and second time they come on, the birds freak out about it.'cause it's new. Yep. And it's different.

Carey Blackmon:

They did.

Jeff Mattocks:

And after about three days they figure out, this feels really good. And, they're in, they're all in. Not a problem.

Carey Blackmon:

And I'll also say this in August, like you're talking about earlier, with no wind. When the true dog days of summer typically it's also very dry and I didn't like my bird's feathers. Had more sheen to'em than they had any other summer. And I attribute that to the the misters like it, it worked out really well. And a lot of my pins also have a 12 inch fan in the top that blows air down and it just blows straight down. But it keeps air moving even when the wind's not So that. They really like that.

Jeff Mattocks:

You now, your sheen also, you've, over the last couple years, you've been constantly like tweaking and improving your feed formula. So they're, I'm not saying that the MRS helped and keeping'em comfortable helped and the summer will dry out feathers. That's a hundred percent true. With the corrections you've made to the feed by getting the fat levels right. Getting the amino acids and then the proteins and everything else where they need to be. You're enabling the bird to maintain that healthier look longer. Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

And that also helped. I am not gonna say that eliminated the heat stress. No, by no means, but it definitely made it better, I feel like, with the fans and the water. Oh yeah,

Jeff Mattocks:

absolutely. And trying to figure out and not everybody can do this, right? You can do this, some people can do this. But when you get a feed formula where you can reduce the corn and you have that higher fat level. You're getting your energy, you're getting more energy from fat, which re, which has the least amount of body heat increase during digestion. And so imagine this, but corn has 1500 calories per pound. Fat has like cooking oil and dietary fat has 4,000. So it's a two and a half to one offset. So for every two and a half pounds of fat added to the diet. Or for every one pound of fat I can replace two and a half pounds of corn.'cause when starch and carbohydrates digest, and we know this, right? You go eat a high starchy diet in the middle of August and eat your body so you're gonna really hot. Yes. Because it requires a lot of oxygen. It pulls a lot of oxygen to break those carbohydrates and starches down. And during that oxidation process, you have increased body heat, right? You don't have nearly that body heat increase from using higher levels of fat. Okay? But that's, not the commercial industry uses vitamin C. So they'll add one, they'll add between one and two pounds of ascorbic acid by, technical name for vitamin C. Right? People could consider like we, we've told people about the the homemade electrolyte mix, and you could actually add some lemon juice to that. Or some vitamin C and even kick that up a notch as far as relieving heat stress, as it is, it does a nice job of relieving heat stress, but if you wanted to take it to the next level, adding some natural vitamin C to that mix, it is gonna get you even further. Yeah. But yeah, commercial industry manages heat stress by adding vitamin C plus they have, all their barns have big fans in'em. They're moving air constantly.

Carey Blackmon:

Oh yeah, they're huge fans.

Huge. Yeah. And

Carey Blackmon:

so we have a question here. Okay. Cassie wants to know, what suggestion do we have to beat the heat when your birds are stuck at a fair or any other poultry show for that matter?

Jeff Mattocks:

Not a whole lot you're gonna do other than, like I said if you did the homemade electrolyte mix or you buy it, but. And adding some vitamin C to that mix, so that base mix is two ounces of vinegar, apple cider vinegar, one ounce molasses, one tablespoon in grated ginger, A teaspoon of salt, and. Like a quarter teaspoon of Tabasco sauce. The reason for the Tabasco sauce folks, is it dilates tissue in the digestive tract, which allows for faster absorption.

Okay?

Jeff Mattocks:

We're not trying to make Mexican chickens. That's not the purpose here. So it's, it actually has a scientific purpose for the mix being in the mix. Now, to that mix, you could add two ounces of lemon juice.

Or,

Jeff Mattocks:

some type of vitamin C delivery. Squeeze

the orange. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. And It helps with the flavor. The birds are gonna appreciate it,

and

Jeff Mattocks:

it's going to take you up a notch on that heat stress management. For sure.

Carey Blackmon:

And I'll also add one thing that I have done when transporting birds, which should also be done at a show. We have, everybody knows that we have toddlers. And at one point a couple years ago, we went, took'em, took some of the kids to Disney World and we got a battery powered fan to clip onto a stroller. And over the years, transporting chickens in the summertime, like in an enclosed trailer. I have used that battery powered fan to help cool the birds. So if you got some that are stuck, just stick the fan out there by'em. I'm sure the birds next to'em will appreciate it too.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah battery operated fan are a rechargeable, battery operated fan. Definitely is a good option. You see a lot of those people carrying'em in hotter places, so it's yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

Also the ones that are battery powered that have the squirt bottles on them, you could hit a bird with that every now and then. That would help out too, while you're at a fair. So what are some ways that we could, let's say you're hot too.'cause it feels like it's 110 outside. What's some ways that you could go out there quickly, check on your birds during the day and know, Hey, we got a problem. We've got heat stress, like they're showing signs. We need to do something. What are some things that you can look at and see on your birds to know real quick that there's a problem?

Jeff Mattocks:

You already mentioned it, but they're gonna have their wings flared. They're gonna have their wings lifted, allowing more, airflow under the wing where there's a lot of trapped heat and those are the early signs. And then you're actually gonna see open mouth breathing, like panting going on and by the time you get to panting, I start to worry because now they're respirating out more moisture. By breathing through their open beak and breathing through their nostrils, right? So they're transpiring more moisture, it's being expelled out through the lung and we just gotta make sure, working across many different genres of poultry keepers. I honestly will tell you the number one mistake I see. Is people put their sun, put their drinking or their drinkers in direct sunlight, and that is the number one mistake. Chickens are not sun worshipers. And I've watched a lot of chickens die because. They would rather sit in the shade and not drink than have to go out into direct sunlight, between 10 and three in the afternoon. They, they will avoid going out there to drink that water. Plus the water's really hot being in that direct sunlight. So yeah, just not a good combination. A couple years ago I had suggested to Carol Wilson down in Odessa, Texas to get some cheap, 20 co coolers, 24 foot cooler, whatever, cheap, cooler and plumb those up to run gravity flow to her drinkers. And in there, then she could freeze like one gallon, blocks of ice. Fill that up with water and fill that up with water and could be serving cold water all day right through, whether it's a small nipple line or something like that.

Carey Blackmon:

So what I started doing is I take, I'll go to a show and I'll see the half gallon water cups. That they have for the cages, the cage cups that are like ginormous. If you take those and put, all the way, but about an inch worth of water in them, put that in your deep freeze in the afternoon, they'll freeze overnight.

Yep.

Carey Blackmon:

And I, everybody knows that I have a lot of automatic waters that use a five gallon bucket as a reservoir. I put three or four of those in the bucket and it cools down everything that's in the line. Those huge chunks of ice will last several hours, even in hot water. So that, I know it's not ice water, but it's a lot better. And one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, because I've seen this in several groups, is a lot of people when they do see their birds panting or they see watery droppings, they panic. Then they want to go get ice water and give it to the chickens. Personally I wondered if that would not cause'em to go in shock. So I wanted to ask you about your opinion and how you felt on that.

Jeff Mattocks:

They're not gonna go into shock, but they're not gonna drink as much of that as we want them to. Okay. So really cold water like below, say 50 degrees they're going to avoid drinking that. Just as much as they're going to avoid drinking water that's over a hundred degrees.'cause it's been in the sunlight.

And

Jeff Mattocks:

so if we can keep water like 65 to 85 degrees. They're gonna drink that. Okay.'cause it's still way lower than their body temperature.

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

I see a lot of waterers out there. I see a lot of drinkers. And if you went out and did a temperature check at three o'clock in the afternoon in some climates right it's gonna be well over a hundred degrees. And, yeah. The bird only drinks it because it needs to, not really because it likes it. So figuring out a way to serve some cool cooler water particularly during the peak heat, like from noon to four is gonna be pretty critical. I don't know how everybody does that. I'm, I don't have a system in my mind that's gonna work for everybody. Like I had suggested to you earlier today and yesterday is. If I had a circulation system where the water was always moving, one that encourages, everybody knows the chicken likes to go chase water and why they do that, I don't know, but they like moving water. So if you could have a recirculation system, you could actually have that come back to one single large reservoir that is on a float. That's automatically getting filled. You can pump it with a pond pump or something like that. Low voltage doesn't take a lot. But keeping that moving now you could put a larger chunk of ice in that reservoir to keep that water, at a really nice temperature. And it sounds like a lot of work and people, I can see their eyes rolling back in their head, but I've seen this working with a little bit of thought, just a recirculation system, especially if your pens are all lined up in a straight row, or if your birds are all in one group, working on a circulating system of water, they for sure drink more water, that's, and the more water I can get into'em through this upcoming, next month is gonna be really important.

Carey Blackmon:

And not only that, when you're raising, when you hatch out chicks, them drinking a lot of water as a chick is also very important. So something like that wouldn't just benefit in the summertime. It would benefit

Oh yeah. Year

Carey Blackmon:

round. Because in the wintertime. Running water is not gonna be as acceptable to freezing Yep. As still water. Which is, the twofold behind my thought process. What I was originally thinking is using some gutters and put gutters in the pens, like a foot section or whatever, and then using a flexible hose to connect them. And, just have a pump pushing water to them all the time and pulling it back into a 30 gallon drum and circulating that way. But I'm gonna try it on a smaller scale. I've got a couple of single pins that I'm gonna try it with because I know, there's the size of the hose, the size of everything is gonna play. Into a factor with pumping it and keeping the level up and all that mess.

Jeff Mattocks:

What size drinkers are you using

Carey Blackmon:

right now? The birds in this area have half gallon cage cups.

Jeff Mattocks:

Those are pretty large. Now, just now we're taking this to a personal conversation level, but I think people might be able to gain something from it. The quarter inch rubber tubing. Some people refer to it as spaghetti tubing. If you drill the right size hole and you almost compress, fit it into that hole, right? You don't need a whole lot of fittings and other things. It's amazing on its own. So if you have that now pumping where it's pulling pulling instead of pushing, yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

See, I thought about that too. If I've got it pulling instead of pushing, it would probably be more even. So I'm thinking about that because what I have seen is take a small torch and drill a small hole. Use the torch to heat the hole up, push the tube through, and when it cools back down, it's really tight against the tube. I've seen that too.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. You don't even need the torch. The pastured poultry folks do this all the time. So you just measure your quarter inch spaghetti tubing. And you get a drill that's just under that by about a 16th of an inch. And if you cut it on an angle, you can get it started in the hole, grab it with a pair of pliers and pull it right in. And it,

Carey Blackmon:

Hey, there we go.

Jeff Mattocks:

It doesn't leak. It'll hold itself.

Carey Blackmon:

See here's bud. Right here with it. The plaing, which he even, he knows for sure that I'm a huge fan of the Plaing Bell waters. They're their quarter inch line that's made by Plaing has a, uses a, use a five 16th hole and you can pull it through like that.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah.'cause I think the outside to measure measurement on most of those tubes is three eights. Being that 16th under. You can, you can, there's enough compression slash friction to, to pull it through there and it's not gonna leak. And I see this all the time. So it's a pretty simple situation.

Carey Blackmon:

And I will say this I, I have tried, don't cheap out on the rubber hose. Buy the good stuff and buy the black because. Everybody's oh, black, it summertime's gonna be a lot hotter. Yeah, but you're not gonna have algae in it. Yeah. And you're not gonna have it pop in the wintertime. On my plaing bells in the wintertime, the only place that froze was the little rip around the lip around that they drank out of, pop that a couple times with a knife, ship it out, water comes back in. So that's worked out really good. Rob Garrin wants to know what's the deal with his birds basing in the sun on a very hot day? Are they trying to kill feather mites or something? They'll fan near their wings out and act like they're trying to get every bit of sun they can.

Jeff Mattocks:

And I, I sat here and read that three times and Rob, I have no idea why your birds are doing that. Now. Look, I admittedly, I see chickens all the time. They'll pull into the sunshine and they'll bask like he's referring to. I generally don't see them do it for more than about 30 minutes, and once they reach a certain temperature. Or light stimulation, then they're back in the shade. I'll see'em do it periodically, but not, never really for more than an hour at a time. But not every breed of chicken's the same. And turkeys for instance, they don't care, right? They're they don't, sunlight doesn't bother them. Nearly as much as a chicken. But, chickens all were derived. They, my understanding is they all pretty much come from the old Asian game foul and then they've been bred for specific traits and crossed and whatever to get where we're, where they are today. But everything, what I've been told by people smarter than me is all chickens are originated from. Birds that live in a jungle are under a tree canopy. So

Carey Blackmon:

that's what I've heard too. They all came from jungle about.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

And they've been bred to, to do whatever over the years. Okay. I get it. Elective breeding, you can do a lot with that.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. And his are solid black birds, which, you know, and I don't know how long they're basking in the sun. Just my observations. I'll see'em do it, and when I had chickens here in the backyard Yep, I'd see'em do it maybe an hour. And that was usually all they could tolerate. And then they're moving on. But my birds seem to prefer morning sun, while it was still a little cooler and late morning they would catch some late morning sun. But never more than an hour. Mine,

Carey Blackmon:

mine will do it too. They'll get in the sunlight and they'll scratch the dirt up to make it a little loose if it's not already. And they'll flop around in that crap like they're, having a stroke or something. And then they'll just stand up and, okay, I'm ready to get outta the heat now. I was ready to get outta here a long time ago. What do y'all do? What's some other stuff that you could do that might help besides keeping the water? Good. Now I will ask this. I got to, it's highly controversial in some areas on the don't do it interwebs,

Jeff Mattocks:

don't do it. Don't do it.

Carey Blackmon:

Apple cider vinegar there, there, there's that group that understands the commercial industry. Pumps that stuff into their birds water year round. And then there's the other ones that swear, if you do it in the summertime, you're being cruel and to your chickens and you're gonna harm'em.

Jeff Mattocks:

I can, for the life of me, I cannot figure out where they're coming up with that. That, like they're causing some sort of like lactic acidosis or something like that, and they're creating more stress and they're dehydrating. I don't know where that theory comes from. I really don't. Okay. So I can't even track it back to see if it's valid. Let's see if it's, craziness or whatever. So I, I don't know if somebody knows the science behind that where I can do some research, send me a link. I'm I'll read into it, but, for 30 years, I can only speak to my 30 years, is we've been putting one ounce per gallon of apple cider vinegar per gallon of water.

Alex:

This concludes Part one of Beat The heat. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a poultry friend so they can help their birds beat the heat too. Be sure to join us next Tuesday for Part two of beat the heat.

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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