As many of you know, the past 3 days has been extremely hot (39C - 42C +) and as our first year producing pastured chooks, we needed to work out a strategy to manage heat to ensure our lovely birds are comfortable. After having ancestors from the goldfields in WA the Coolgardie Safe method came to mind and we put together a plan to use left over hessian from our Future of Food event. We cut it to size, fastened it w wooden beams to lay over the chook shelters & then once out there, wet the material to allow the airflow to go through the material and lower the temp in the shelter. With our hot air release doors we put them up too, and it worked! We added heavy hessian bags yesterday thanks to a lovely local lady and then wet them each hour too, since they were so thick they took even longer to dry out which was great and kept the birds cooler again. With over 1000 birds in the paddock, we successfully dropped the temp by 10C in the shelters and didnt have a single loss over the period of heat. Hats off to our fantastic ethical farmer Phil for caring so much for the chooks... And that is why they taste so great! Mission accomplished and quite bloody happy that we can now work on this philosophy to make it easier on ourselves for the next time we have a heat wave... a bit of time, thought and the animals are well looked after and happy!
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 03:50:20 +0000
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