Understanding and Mitigating Heat Stress in Poultry

0:00 Are your birds suffering the effects of summer temperatures? Do you know how to help them through this stressful time? Well, coming up, we're going to help you help your birds. This podcast episode features the audio portion from our last Pottery Key 360 video on heat stress and how to help your flock. So now here's myself, jeff Maddox and John Gunnerman talking about how heat stress can impact your flock and what the symptoms look like and how you can help your flock cope with high summer temperatures.

0:42 We're going to be talking about heat stress tonight and that's something a lot of us are dealing with. I know we have had some horrible temperatures down here in Florida already. We've had about three weeks where we had temperatures very frequently in the plus 100 degree range. The last couple of days have been tolerable because we've had cloudy days, but before that it's been rather miserable. Folks out in Texas and Oklahoma are really really suffering, as are their birds. So let's get right to it. When we get hot weathered, the birds are suffering. Feed intake drops, the egg production drop, the egg weight decreases, the shell quality decreases, the albumium height or the egg white height decreases.

1:31 They're drinking a lot of water, trying to stay hydrated, trying to keep cool and all that water intake will affect the albumium height. Their growth rate slows. I know I've got some young reds now and it's really, really bad on them. They just kind of sit around and mope and they don't eat much and they don't grow much. So maybe when cool weather comes it'll pick back up and they'll get with the program. We can see an increase in mortality, especially when we have really severe cases of heat stress. Cannibalism can increase. The suppression of the immunosystem goes up. One thing a lot of folks don't realize that it can also affect hatchability and fertility, especially in roosters.

2:15 Although I think most others are probably done hatching by this point, I know we still got some die hard who live further north and aren't quite as impacted with the heat, that are not having those problems. Down below that, with production losses from heat stress, it's going to depend a lot on the maximum temperature to which our flock is exposed. I'm not going to get in Jeff's going to. I know he's going to address what we do to overcome that. But the high temperatures, the duration of the high temperatures, the rate of temperature change and relative humidity. You know we hear far that we have a real problem with humidity. Yesterday the humidity was actually higher than the temperature, and that's not all that uncommon.

3:00 But, jeff, what can we do to sort of help our birds get through this heat as well? Yeah, I, you know. Just looking at the top slide or the top, you know stuff up there, look that feed intake is going to go down. So you know we've talked about it in previous episodes where birds eat for their calorie need every day and so when it gets hot they require less calories. That's why we had that heat feed. You know that temperature chart, that you know how much bird needs to eat and what the protein should be. So people that are still actually trying to produce eggs for hatching or table eggs or whatever you know, in Florida, all of my customers are on a 20% protein layer feed in the summer and we pretty much start that by tax day, somewhere around April 15th, 1st of May, and we stay on that till mid-November, you know.

4:01 So you're almost looking at tax day through Thanksgiving. Same thing in Texas, oklahoma, all of the hotter states, higher humidity. Instead of looking at temperature, we, just like they do for us, we need to look at that heat index. You know what does that feel like? Temperature? What is that index number? Because they're feeling it too. You know when the humidity goes up and the temperature goes up, that's the number that actually matters to the chicken. It's not just heat, it's not just humidity, it's a combination, right. But you know, to make a good size egg you got to get 21 grams, not percent. So people need to hear me I need to get 21 grams of protein in a chicken to produce a large egg.

4:48 Okay, so we don't, we don't, we're not gonna get decent egg. I got a quick question Last time I was in our local big box feed store. Here I I about the only thing I could find in the way of a layer was 16 or 17%. Yeah, is it possible that you could push them back to a starter to raise that protein up? If you can't find something, nope. You can absolutely move them back to like a 21, 20 to 22 starter and then hand at the oyster shell, you know, for the calcium part of it and they'll do fine. So you know where people can't access those higher quality you know 19, 20% protein feeds.

5:34 That's exactly what we do, you know. We go find something in the right protein range, hopefully with the right amino acid levels, and then we add the calcium separately and it works, you know. I mean, it gets you through. I was so thankful when we finally got somebody carrying that triple M farm feeds down here. That stuff has made a huge difference and I don't have that problem or that concern when we deal with each trying to find a higher quality protein. It just was not available here in this area. No it wasn't. I mean, you know it was for a little while, then it wasn't for, you know, a couple years.

6:16 And then, you know, caleb started bringing it back in again, down there at Bergen Farms, you know, because he wanted it for himself. You know, I mean, caleb called me and said hey, I need good breeder feed for my turkeys. So I made him formulas and he started working it up to bring it in from triple M farms. And. I said you know, why don't you make this available for other people in your area? I can do that, Of course. You know Caleb's always pretty positive and right, so, wish, wish, there was more people like that who can bring it in. You know, turn it. you know he's bringing in a good quality feed and he's such a pleasure to work with, although I probably couldn't be around him for very long at any one period of time because he's always, which I love.

7:01 You know I'm envious of that, but he is a high energy fellow. When you get out to our age, you know being around a high energy person is not necessarily a good thing, right. No, it's taxing. You know, but when I was in my 30s, like he is, that would have been fine because I could keep up with him. But you know, not anymore. I was expecting Caleb to be an older person and then when I met him, I thought my gosh, this guy looks like he's like 21 or 22 years old, but he's a great guy to work with, I'm guessing around 30. He is a great guy to work with and you know he'll do whatever he can to help get excellent customer service. So, yeah, we just need more people like that. You know elsewhere, yep.

7:44 And I kind of got us off track with that. But I just know it's just an experience that I've had and I know how difficult it's going to be for some folks Trying to find a higher protein feed to feed their birds if they're looking for those high or higher protein levels in their layers. It's just not out there A lot of places. So you kind of have to scratch around and do the best you can for your birds. Yep, yep, but you definitely. Whenever you're above 90 degrees or above 85, actually, with a fair amount of humidity, above 60%, you really want your layers on 19, 20, 21% protein and you know just, especially if you want eggs, okay, if you need eggs, that's fine, you can get them through the summer on a 16%, just don't have high expectations for performance and they're not going to eat a lot, so they're, you know.

8:39 Yeah, so feed intake goes down. You know automatically your production and your egg weight and show quality. All that's going to go right with it. So that's directly tied. Jeff, should we be cutting back on our fat additives on our feed to reduce the energy levels? Actually, john? No, because here's the thing. So if you break apart your different components of a feed just into the simplistic, you know proteins, carbs and fats. Fats have the least effect on body temperature. Proteins are the worst and carbs are right behind them. So getting energy from fat is actually more of a stress reliever than you know getting energy from corn or grain or you know, starch and carbohydrate, joe, yeah, definitely not the time to remove, to remove your fats.

9:38 And folks, if you're brand new to poultry and you're not really sure what some of the signs of heat stress are, if you see a bird standing around with their wings dropped down and kind of held out from the body they're trying to cool off, you'll see them panting a lot. They don't have the ability to sweat like we do, so the only way they can get rid of body heat is through opening those wings up and trying to cool off through panting, and also their comb and waddles will also serve to help dissipate their body heat just by circulating the blood through those. But if you see any of those combinations going on, you need to do something for your birds before it gets too bad.

10:22 You know, sadly I talk to folks every year who have lost birds. I talked to one Orpington breeder oh gosh, there's been about four or five years ago now who lost almost half their flock of English Orpington and they didn't live in a particularly hot part of the country but they have such profuse feathering that the heat was really rough on them. So if you're raising these loose feathered birds like Orpingtons or Cochens or Brahmins, Langsens basically some of your Asiatic type breeds you need to plan ahead for these birds because they're going to have problems dealing with the heat.

11:02 I can guarantee it. You know people don't want to hear this and I've beat a dead horse, so to speak. But when we hit this end of July, beginning of August, it's a perfect time to mulch your birds. And here's the thing you want to get rid of the internal fat because all it's doing is holding heat. Plus, you lowered the protein, you lowered the carbohydrates, right, so you're taking heat stress off the birds anyway and you're limiting the amount of feed. You know it all comes together timing-wise for a reason. You know when you hit the hardest people living in the tropics with 12 hours of light and the weather's always 85 degrees, the birds don't really know when to mulch.

11:47 I think it's more based on the length of day, just shifting a little bit. That might trigger it, but it's not as indicative as what we have up here in the Northern Hemisphere. It's completely different. But I mean the timing for doing a mulch is perfect for most people. Birds want to do it that time anyway. Hard part is right now are all the fairs and some of the shows. But like 4-H shows and county fairs and so on, you know you want your bird to be looking good. That's tough. It is. You know, so many shows, particularly in North and where I live much, much further north, occurred during the summer and that's the hardest time of the year to have a bird in condition to show.

12:37 Well, you can just look at them cross-eyed and they'll start dropping. Blue means just mulching like crazy. But you're right, this is the opportune time of the year to take advantage of what would occur naturally. And you know, just manage that mulch. You know we've got a video on YouTube called Managing the Mulch. We did a live stream on that and Jeff was talking to everybody through exactly the steps you'd need to go through to properly manage that mulch and drop that excess body weight. I'm just going to echo what he said because we can't say it enough. Our birds tend, they can overeat in a heartbeat, they can put on excess fat that they don't need. If you have a bird that dies, unfortunately, and you open it up and you see all this yellow fat in there, that bird's overweight and that was causing to the adding to the stress that bird was under, trying to lose body Body.

13:30 Jeff, what about water? What can we do to encourage burst and great water? Well, you know I uploaded the video that Carol Wilson shared with us from Grimes Cadillac. You know where you're using a fairly inexpensive cooler and you're putting cold water in there and Carol's actually going out to get like the one gallon paintpales that you can get at loads or Home Depot. She's going to be freezing blocks of water to put in those coolers to keep that temperature cool. You know more throughout the day. You know and what I'm getting ready to say, I realize not everybody can do this, but for people that are at home all the time, you know throughout the day if you can figure out how to change out your water just before the hottest part of the day.

14:21 So if you eat your lunch and you go out and you actually changed your water, then you would be helping your birds out tremendously. As long as there's air movement, the birds also, you know. As long as so, using fans setting up your buildings, you know, trying to get as much air movement as you can, it's going to help the birds. You know they do perspire, you know. So that evaporation process, you know if there's no air moving, the birds are just miserable, no matter where they're at. So that's going to be a big help. I actually told a breeder out in California if he could rig up his pens with recirculating water. You know kind of like they do in motels and other places, so you always get hot water right away.

15:05 In this case you would get cold water right away. So, tubing going through all the pens or the work all the, you know where the birds are and you know doing a cut out trough but the water is constantly moving in there because birds will chase moving water. We've all seen it right. You dump a bucket and they're going to chase dirty water across the floor or across the ground. Yeah Well, friends of mine down here in O'Brien, florida, they figured this out with their turkeys right. So they'll actually use that quarter inch tubing small spaghetti type tubing and they'll rig that up so it just dribbles all day into a pan tent.

15:46 By doing that they increase their feed consumption by almost 40% and they knocked off grow out time for those birds. Those are really good numbers. When they figured out that the turkeys needed, you know they wanted running water and he sent me a video. I should share that with you. Remind me tomorrow and I'll try and dig it up. But he sent me a video of that dribbling into a pan underneath. Turkeys are just reaching right up there. You know, you know they're trying to get to that water source. Catch it while it's in midair. It's hilarious. I mean, if you need some good redneck entertainment, this is it. I've got some good friends who are into birding and bird photography and wild birds and all this kind of thing and they actually have what they call a water dribbler that attaches to the side of your birdbath.

16:32 That is just constantly dripping water and the sound of that water. The birds just flock to it. So I can absolutely see where it worked was poking. I have never seen any type of poultry that didn't like to chase water. I never, I never have. And you're older than me, rip, but you know it to be true, right, you're thinking you bird, you're stupid. I just gave you fresh water and you're chasing it across the dirty floor, right, so you can figure out a way to move water and they that, once they find it, you'll increase that. And if you can figure out how to cool it and move it and a redneck move it and a recirculation system, you're going to do a lot for your birds.

17:15 Somebody on one of our groups and I don't know whether it was a poultry keeper 360 Facebook group or your poultry breeders nutrition group hosted a design that he had for recirculating water, and I can't. I'd have to go back and look to see if I could find it. The only other one that I shared. I, you're right, and I don't remember who that was, but I shared one, but it's more in like a large coop confinement for, you know, a group of players. Yeah and really he just had two 35 gallon trash cans on at both ends and he just uses a sumpo and he'd run it down that too, you know, they'd go to the other end and when the sump pump kicked on it push it back and it just recirculated.

18:02 Then he had a stock float and so the barrel never ran out of water. But he's doing that for winter water, so they never, you know. So it helps keep it from freezing in the northern winter times folks. You know, I just occurred to me, but if you have a garden center around you that Carries a lot of equipment for aqua-ponic and hydroponic, they're gonna have some of these smaller pumps and they're not they're not really all that expensive, so that could be a good place to pick up one of those without paying a horrendous price for it. I mean, if you want to get really crazy, this is what I do here I have From company called pet safe.

18:44 You can find them tractor supply online at chewy, wherever right, pet safe. I have a water fountain for my three cats and the dog right and I Can't tell you how many times in the course of a day I watch them. They're drinking where it comes out of the fountain, versus out of the Out of the bottom of the trough. Now, if she's in a hurry and she, she needs volume in a hurry, she'll drink out of the trough. But yeah, her and the cats you know the dog and the three cats, they're all like drink it where it comes out of the top of that fountain. You can invest in those and I mean you need electric, but I, I swear you'd gonna increase your you know your volume of water intake and then Anytime you get more water in them they're gonna be healthier, just bottom line what about and we've talked about this in other situations, but Is would there be any benefit to, example, adding molasses to your water?

19:44 Right, you know, and I posted that out there. Did you put it on poultry keeper 360? I know I put it on poultry breeder nutrition, but Basically, you know the poultry electric light and you can use it for anything. I shouldn't just say it's for poultry. Here's the thing. You know, it's two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, one tablespoon of cooking molasses or blackstrap molasses, great about and this is per gallon of water, and great about a teaspoon of fresh ginger and about a teaspoon of salt. Right, mix that up really good and serve it. And, and you know, I think, john, aren't you doing that? You just describe what I drink every day and give to my chickens when it's appropriate.

20:29 I try not to give it to them all the time I Quit using the word switch old, because People thought it was some sort of voodoo, you know. Well, I found out there's an alcoholic drink, haymakers punch, that they also called switch old. It's loosely based on the same flavor profile right. But if you look up homemade switch, oh the basing, the base formula, is what I just gave you per gallon. And Don't put the lid on when you put the ginger and everything in there, because it's going to, it's gonna fizz up. It actually gets a little fizzy like a carbonated soft drink and it's fine. But just don't put the lid on too tight. You could have an accident. But the you know the birds are gonna love it, right, and when it's really hot you can make this up three, four days ahead of time.

21:15 Not gonna spoil, it's really simple. But as far as heat stress, it's phenomenal. When I use it. I empty my waterers on a daily basis because I was worried about bacteria buildup because of the excess sugar. Really not that much of a concern, yeah you know. I mean, if you used it today and tomorrow, you just went in and put in fresh water, I'm I'm good, I'm good with that. It just depends on you know how often you're doing it. But when you're above 90, 95 degrees or your heat index is above 90, man I could see doing it at least three or four times a week, and as soon as you serve it, you're going to see the energy level of the birds pick up within an hour.

21:57 I mean it is phenomenal how much difference it makes. I know how much of a difference it makes when I drink it. Okay, it's crazy, it's a real energy boost. I was calling it chicken Gatorade for a little while, but that's not really fair. Switching is hard for people to understand or Google it, so I don't know. But the recipe is out there poultry breed or nutrition group and you can grab it and put it in the other. I did. If you haven't, okay, I can't think. But yeah, I did. Yeah, phenomenal stuff, but in a cool water, lots of shade, try and capture as much moving air. Garlic's going to help this time of year. So here's my thing with garlic is I like to hold it back and only use it when I have an illness.

22:43 Okay, so if I suspect I have an infection in the bird, that's when I want to really get after the garlic, to use it kind of prophylactically or just use it, you know, because it's awesome stuff. I lose the benefits, you know, when it comes time to treat an illness. So you just you need to make that personal decision on your own. Do you want to reserve it for an emergency or do you want to use it all the time? There's nothing wrong with using it all the time. All right, I have nothing against it. But you know that you need to bruise it and you need to let it change from that creamy white to more of a brown. Right, it'll get dark when you bruise it and then slice it up because you want to release the internal compound known as Allison.

23:29 Okay, and the Allison is the true benefits behind garlic. What about vitamin or mineral supplements? Anything you would suggest there? I've heard of things that I've never tried any. I'm not opposed to them. Here's the thing is all the electrolyte packs that you buy, attractor supply, jeffers supply every, you know, everywhere online. If you look at them and read the label closely, right, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, sodium chloride okay, loaded with salt. All those are salts and you know too much salt. So you don't run those every day and you don't run them over their recommended levels.

24:13 But yeah, just don't. I mean, because you're going to that much salt you could do damage to the kidneys, right, and you could also actually have some salt burn, you know, in the digestive tract. So you use those when you're under like severe stress and you don't have anything else, then go ahead and use them and people are addicted to those things. It's crazy how many people give them electrolyte. Give them electrolyte. Give them electrolyte. There's a number of things I hear. And I cringe. It's like no, please, don't just just give them the chicken Gatorade and you know, maybe we need to call that chicken aid or something, I don't know. We need to give it a name. But even then just get it out there for people.

24:55 It's so much, it's simple. I mean, once you have the molasses and every kitchen should have the vinegar right, every kitchen has the salt the only thing that you got to get is the ginger. And, john, correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know this 100% but I would think you could grate the whole ginger root and take your teaspoon, put the rest in a jar and probably put it in the freezer and not really lose. If you were cooking with it you would lose flavor. But for this purpose of the switchell or the chicken aid, I don't think you'd lose the benefits. But I don't know the properties of ginger frozen.

25:35 Well, I'm just wondering if it's the aroma or the flavor of the ginger or there's some thing that's in there, I would say, mix it in with your salt and let the salts absorb that. If you went even amounts then you could just go two teaspoons of the salt. Just take your bruised lump of ginger and throw it in the container with the salt and let it absorb that, if that's what they're after. I think it's more than a scent. I really do think there's a compound in the ginger that is giving an energy boost. Whether it's vitamin or other, I don't know, but there's definitely an unusual taste when you with and without the ginger in the switchell.

26:20 I notice that I use candy ginger because getting fresh ginger here out in the hinterlands is difficult. And from my own internal health. I notice the difference. These just start their own self. I can do ginseng here. I can't do ginger. Really Not even in the greenhouse with the chickens. If I can keep the chickens from eating it. Well, this concludes the live stream's heat stress segment. You can watch the rest of the live streams, if you like, by going to the poultry keepers 360 YouTube channel. We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the poultry keepers podcast. Be sure and join us next time, because we have a very special program announcement to share with you.

27:03 So, until then, we hope your flock stays happy, healthy and productive.