With chickens being notorious for their fragility, heatwaves and poor air quality are making this a challenging summer for district poultry farmers, but not an impossible one.
Lacking any sweat glands, chickens cool down primarily by panting and holding out their wings to let air cool their bodies. In heavy humidity, these methods tend to fail, making them highly susceptible to extreme or fatal heat exhaustion. Chickens also have extremely sensitive respiratory systems that consistently move air in a one-way direction through the lungs, causing them to be much more prone to air-contaminant-triggered respiratory infections.
So, how does a bird that is infamously vulnerable to both heat and poor air conditions react to record-breaking heatwaves in a region of rampantly burning wildfires? If precautions and cooling methods are ignored, they’re at risk of dying, said Al Dam, a provincial poultry specialist.
“When it comes to heat, we have to put electrolytes in the water,” Dam said. “You’ve got to do that about three days before a heat event, so that takes some planning to do. Electrolytes prepare their bodies for the heat, but it’s a bit too late to give it to them when they’re already heat stressed. It takes a bit of prep work, but in the grand scheme of things, it helps.”
Once a heatwave has set in, and there is little to no reprieve in the evenings, the farmer needs to be proactive in keeping the birds cool.
“Chickens only have certain ways to lose heat, and a farmer has a limited number of options to cool them off,” Dam said. “Keep them in the shade and make sure they have cold, fresh water. Have fans to stir the air and move the heat. Getting birds to stand up also really works.”
Having the chicken on its feet instead of sitting is part of what goes into minimizing the warmth they produce, Dam said.
“Chickens, when they’re really hot, they tend to just sit down. They’re sitting on litter, which is an insulator; it’ll trap a bunch of heat under its belly.”
The best way to get the chicken up and moving is to make it think it’s being rained on, Dam said. “Using a garden hose and just spraying the birds, not blasting them, but spraying like raindrops falling on them—that can be enough for the bird to go, ‘Oh!’ and stand up.”
“Another thing a farmer can do is pull the feed. When they eat, they generate metabolic energy to digest, which causes more heat. Pull the feed in the morning, before they wake up and give it to them at night. You’ll miss out on a bit of production, but I’d rather that happen than have the bird drop from heat prostration.”
Laying hens are smaller than broiler chickens, which are raised specifically for meat, and less vulnerable to heat. However, they are just as sensitive to the smoke. For this issue, there isn’t much a farmer can do outside of keeping good ventilation.
“We can’t put a N95 mask on a chicken, and you can’t put a filter on a barn,” Dam said. “You can’t say ‘Well, we’re just not going to have forest fires’, so we’ve got to do the best we can with the situation we have. For smoke, it’s going to be a short-term thing, hopefully, and then we move on, and the birds can recover from that.”
Being prepared and proactive during these events can make a difference. It certainly is for Gerber Farms, a local laying hen, beef cattle and cash crop-producing farm that hasn’t lost a single bird this season due to heat or smoke.
“The hens have managed really well,” owner Micha Gerber said. “Ventilation was at a maximum, and they’re drinking lots of water to stay cool. It was a bit of a stress, but they did come through really well. We’re really thankful for that.”
“A concern is that if there’s a big power outage we’re not planning for, then that would be catastrophic. It’s those kinds of days that we’re really keeping an eye on things. If something like that happens, we’ll need to get doors open and just keep the air moving.”
