Nobody loves hot weather, and that includes your chickens. Just like we enjoy a cold treat on a hot day, so too does your flock. Here are some cool (and cooling) ideas for summer treats for your chickens.
Cool Water
Just like us, chickens drink more when the weather is hot. But warm water discourages drinking.
So keeping your chickens water cool in hot weather helps keep them hydrated. Depending on just how hot the temperature gets, these steps will help keep the drinking water from being too warm for chickens to drink:
- Place the drinker where it will not be warmed by direct sun.
- Several times a day replace the warmed water in the drinker with cooler tap water.
- Place large chunks of ice in the drinker during the heat of the day.
An easy way to provide chunks of ice is to freeze a water-filled plastic soda bottle. It will stay clean inside the drinker, so all you have to do is rinse it off and refreeze it for the next day.
Juicy Fruit
Juicy summer fruits and vegetables provide moisture in addition to the water the chickens drink. Fruits and vegetables also furnish many beneficial nutrients. Here are just some of the popular summer treats chickens enjoy pecking at:
- Watermelon — cut opened and served seeds, rind, and all
- Cantaloupe — or any kind of melon you have on hand
- Cucumbers — a great way to use overripe cukes from the garden
- Tomatoes — yes, chickens can eat tomatoes, just not the green vines
- Summer squash — zucchini and other summer squash are flock favorites
- Winter squash — chickens also love pumpkin and other winter squash
During the summer, anyone who prepares meals at home, or engages in home canning, has plenty of peels and other vegetable scraps. Don’t toss them. Feed them to your chickens. They’ll love you for it.
Frozen Treats
Besides popping the above treats into the fridge for a couple hours before serving them to your chickens, you might freeze smaller bites of fruits and vegetables for them to enjoy. Frozen fruits chickens relish as summer treats include blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, and strawberries. Chickens also like apples, cored (but not necessarily peeled) cut into small pieces.
Excellent frozen veggies include carrots cut into small cubes, corn kernels, and peas. When preparing them fresh, don’t overlook including carrot tops and pea pods as summer treats for your chickens.
Or mix and match by keeping a container in the freezer for collecting leftovers to make a picturesque medley. Your chickens won’t care if the produce is fresh or steamed.
To slow down how much frozen foods your chickens eat at once, cover the food bits with water before freezing them. The colorful pieces showing through the ice will encourage pecking, and the bits of ice they peck off the chunk will help cool them while they work at getting at the frozen goodies.
Take It Slow
You don’t want to replace your chicken’s diet solely with fruit and vegetable treats. A general rule feed no more than 10% of the chickens’ total diet in treats. That amounts to only about 2 tablespoons per chicken per day.
But even this small amount will help your chickens cool down and hydrate. And it keeps the flock entertained when otherwise they wouldn’t be doing much else during the heat of the day.
Helpful Links
How Chickens Keep Themselves Cool in Summer
7 Ways to Help Your Chickens Stay Cool in Summer
16 Chicken Breeds that Tolerate Warm Weather
5 Bantam Breeds that Tolerate Warm Weather
And that’s today’s news from the Cackle Coop.
Gail Damerow has written numerous books about keeping poultry, many of them available from the Cackle Bookstore.
