Shade Infrastructure

With the usual drought conditions setting in during late June and July, Polyface employs a number of solutions to keep farm animals cool and comfortable. Each species expresses its own preference for cool-off method, and Polyface has figured out how to keep them all happy. As you probably guess, it’s about more than just blocking the sun.

Laying hens, for example, really like the wall-less A-frame shelter with its open architecture. The air underneath it is cooler than the air outside it. That temperature differential creates cross breezes that are always moving through it, continuously cooling the area inside the shelter, even on hot days when the air is still everywhere else. This shelter also provides protection from rain. An electrified net forms the fencing around the shade structure to keep the flock close by, while at the same time allowing them freedom to venture out and forage for grass, bugs, worms, and small rodents. It keeps predators at bay, and prevents the hens from escaping outside the safe zone. Since chickens are omnivores, this designated area offers a complete diet that meets their natural requirements for robust health.

Every couple days the shelter and the net around it are moved to a fresh grassy spot. This avoids the build up of manure and exposure of ground which tend to intensify heat. Clean grass is much cooler than bare ground.

Since ducks are water fowl, they don’t mind getting wet in the rain. As the water evaporates off their feathers, it cools them down. So their shelter of preference is a shade cloth above them that shields them from the hot sun, yet allows the rain to get through. This shade cloth is the same that is used in the garden.

The herbivores — cows and lambs — also use the porous shade cloth, as well as sheltering under trees in each paddock. The trouble with shade trees is that you can’t move them. So when the animals congregate under a tree for a few hours a day, their manure collects and concentrates in the same spot around the trees day after day, while open areas without trees do not receive this blessing.

But with a shade cloth structure (which looks like a huge umbrella on wheels), shade can be strategically located anywhere in the pasture where fertility is needed, and moved at will as often as you please. This gives the animals more options for staying out of the hot sun, and it spreads their waste (i.e., fertilizer!) out over the surface of the field without you lifting a finger (who wants to spend time and fuel in a tractor shoveling and pushing around all that excrement?).

Pigs especially like the shade cloth shelters. After a couple days of rooting and excavating, a good rain turns the dirt to mud. Pigs LOVE to wallow in the mud. In addition to cooling them off, the layer of mud on their skin prevents sunburn. 

Of course, everyone always has ready access to drinking water to head off dehydration. Keeping your cool at Polyface is a multi-faceted endeavor requiring the focus and attention of the farmer.