Chickens Every Day
Dedicated to helping backyard chicken owners keep the happiest and healthiest flocks we can.
Chickens Every Day
Beat the Heat: DIY Electrolytes for Healthier Summer Chickens
Are we ready, pawpaw? Hello friends and welcome to Chicken. Every Day, a podcast for you, the backyard chicken enthusiast, and mine. Your host is my Pawpaw, gary, Gary Valerie of Senla Backyard Chickens. Here we have fun while sharing ideas and learning how to care for our foul-feathered friends. Check out our videos at Senla that's C-E-N-L-A Backyard Chickens on YouTube, tiktok and Facebook. So, without further ado, let's start today's show. How was that? Oh, yes, it's recording. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, gary, with CENLA, backyard Chickens and the Chickens Everyday Podcast, and if you live in the Northern Hemisphere it's hot, and if you live in the United States it's hot and dry or it's hot and wet. The theme of that is hot, and heat stresses out your chickens, and stress is one of the things that causes egg laying problems. It reduces their health. We have issues with that. So I have got a recipe for electrolytes for you today that you are absolutely going to love. But before we get into that, let's remember the three important things about whenever summertime hits for your chicken, and that's shade, fresh water and air circulation. Okay, you always want shade. If you look out here at our place, we've got shade trees. We've got shade trees around. We're able to free range. If you don't have that option and if you don't have that option, then build some sort of shade for your chickens. It's very, very important.
Speaker 2:Next is air circulation. Inside my coop over here I have two large intake fans. I run one at the time. At night time it gets very hot inside this thing and that does two things it keeps us cooler in there whenever I have all that fresh air and it keeps ammonia down at the same time. Number three is that fresh water that we always want to keep for your birds. If you're able to change your water out every day, there's little tips and tricks that you can do. You can freeze a gallon, put it, put it in a bigger container for your chicken to have cold water. I will give my chickens watermelon and cantaloupe that is very, very cold. I will take slice up grapes, slice up blueberries, put them in ice trays and freeze them. Anything to get them enticed into drinking. Some good cold water is always good for your chickens.
Speaker 2:So one of the things while we're here, and while we're here and I'm gathering eggs, I'm going to talk about that recipe. This is stuff that you probably have in your pantry already and, if not, it's things that you're probably going to want in your pantry, and it's four easy ingredients. We use apple cider vinegar with the mother, and this is per gallon, two tablespoons. We use standard molasses two tablespoons per gallon. We use non-iodized salt, plain salt one teaspoon per gallon. And we use crushed grated ginger root and at one teaspoon per gallon as well. Now what this does what this does it replenishes the minerals that your chickens lose whenever they're under stress or whenever they're too hot. So we start off with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar from the mother and I say from the mother, you want to make tablespoons of apple cider vinegar from the mother? And I say from the mother, you want to make sure that it says that on the bottle.
Speaker 2:The mother is just the term they use for the beneficial bacteria that they leave in the apple cider vinegar. If you look in the bottom of the bottle you'll see a little layer, quarter inch or so thick, of some brown stuff. That's the bacteria that we want to have in there. And if you're curious how they make that, it's really a simple type of recipe. You can even make it at home if you have the stuff that you need. But you crush apples to extract all the juice, you add yeast to it and the yeast eats the sugars in the apple juice, converts the sugars to alcohol. Now we have hard apple cider. Then they put bacteria, certain bacteria. It starts an L big long word like that and they put inside there and that eats the alcohol, converts the alcohol into lactic or acetic acid and then you have vinegar. That's what acetic acid is.
Speaker 2:And apple cider vinegar with the mother is good for pH balance. It's good to not to help keep out the unwanted parasites, like some worms. It's good to help keep the good bacteria up inside the chickens. And again, you want to be cautious. Do not overdo this recipe. This is not one of these recipes that, oh, a little bit of this stuff works. A little bit more will work even better. That's not how this stuff works.
Speaker 2:You can overdose your chickens. So, two tablespoons per gallon apple cider vinegar, two tablespoons of plain molasses. Molasses has tons of benefits. It's got calcium, it's got iron in it. Both of these are essential for proper blood and cell moving inside the chickens. Essential for egg laying. The molasses has a little sweet taste to it because it's got some sugar in it Promotes the chickens and makes them want to drink more. Drinking more is a good thing because it helps them to stay hydrated. Hydrated is what you want.
Speaker 2:Next we get to the salt. One teaspoon of plain, non-iodized salt. You can get that at any grocery store. The reason you want to get non-iodized is because if you feed your chickens a poultry ration from a box store, like I do Purina or any other big name brands they put the iodine in the feed and you don't want to overdo how much iodine that you give your chickens. So plain, non-iodized salt, salt, sodium chloride. It's good for nerve function, for muscle function. It's an essential part of what chickens need in the minerals of their body.
Speaker 2:Last but not least is that grated ginger root. One teaspoon of grated ginger root and we give that to our chickens for the same way we take it as humans. It is just a wonderful superfood. It is a natural antibiotic. It has antioxidant properties to it. It has stuff inside it that helps the cells maintain and hold on to the moisture. It is really really good stuff and that's it.
Speaker 2:Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with the mother, two tablespoons of molasses, one teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of grated ginger and that's all it is to it. And by the time you put this in your pantry, look at how many gallons of electrolytes you can make with this versus what you're going to buy by the little dry packets that you get at the box stores. It is obviously a win-win. You're going to love it, your chickens are going to love it. I appreciate you listening in and if you guys have any questions or comments or you want to be on the show, just send me an email. Chickenseveryday at yahoocom. That's chickenseveryday at yahoocom. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for listening in.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye. That's all we have time for today. I really hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast. Be sure to watch our videos. So, on behalf of my pup, gary, and me, sylvie, thanks for listening.
