Aussie Finch Forum

Well there you are, it's actually cooling down for you guys. Get out the woolly socks. If the trend continues, it'll be a bracing 38 C by the middle of next week!

Seriously, what do you do by way of preparing for and coping with the heat for the birds?

After 3 or 4 days at 38C with a predicted 44C in Adelaide today and the following week with nothing less than 36C.
I have covered the aviaries with shade cloth, I have blinds and I freeze water...lots and lots of water.
Got a freezer that is just full of ice for the birds. Every day the birds get a frozen 10 litre bottle (drinking water) then a deep tray with water in it along with a 3 litre frozen water container and then several other bowls get an ice block. I try and suspend these a little way up off the floor as the birds tend to either sit around the edge go to the floor underneath them and sit in the cool draft.
For a couple of aviaries that are placed quite close to the house as well as the above I can open the windows on that side of the house and the cool air from the house gets blown out that way which helps...a little.

Do a pre Christmas retic check to make sure the auto flush will work twice a day. And generally leave them alone.
LML

It's also important to remember that birds in flight cages cannot get to ground so they need special care. Those one or two cages off the ground may find the heat more oppressive than those close to the floor.

Vets please comment, do you think an additive to the water would be helpful at this time. I'm thinking of the anti-stress type things like Spark.

5.30pm Howlong
I can't work out this climate 15min ago it was 43c here,then a heavy rain deluge with large pieces of hail.
Now clear sky humidity through the roof and upto 40c again. I estimate 10mm of rain in that short time.
Now back to the heat.

Here in Sydney (Liechhardt) it is 27c at this time. Forecast is 31, 30, and 39. Birds are good. Pulled out the brush and boxes last month. Thankfully so. Got caught out 2 yrs ago withtheheat and ants. Won't happen again. Nest boxes go back well after Australia Day. Does anyone remember when we were kids that feb was the hottest month after going back to school after the holidays? Boxes and brush go back late Feb for me. So much for "Boxing Day". Good luck for those who did.

Did not realize how much of a problem the heat can be for you guys, during our last summer if we had 5 or 6 days in the mid to high 20's that was it, other than that it was a few weeks in the high teens to low 20's with loads of rain inbetween. We are in the middle of our winter at the moment which as been really mild so far, its aproaching mid day here now and its 7 C , 2 years back we had weeks on end where the day time high temperature never got above 0C.
On the whole i don't think our climate is too bad as we rarely get extremes in weather although things do seem to be changing, certainly with rainfall.
Hope all your birds come through it all O.K
Bob

This month is shaping to be a humdinger for heat!
I don't want to start a conversation about why (remember folks - a finch forum), but our climate is definitely changing.
A few years ago during a similar heatwave I was working in Nowra, where records were broken. The only number I remember is 41 degrees at Point Perpendicular at about 8 in the evening and the corridor of the emergency department was full of people lying on ambulance trolleys covered in white sheets which were being intermittently soaked by Sister Lyn and blown on with electric fans: they were heatstruck and the aircon wasn't too flash because the ambo doors were almost constantly open.
It was quite surreal.
In one of the two resus beds I had a old woman in a deep coma after trying to get to her car from Woolies across the vast blacktop expanse of the carpark; she succumbed to the heat in her car and was found after perhaps an hour. Her core body temperature was 43 degrees and she was in a deep coma (GCS-5, extensor posturing...). She recovered completely after aggressive invasive rewarming (it was miraculous, frankly). In the other resus bed was a man who appeared to be having a heart attack, and was being organised for a helicopter airlift to St. Vincent's in Sydney, when the old English physician wandered into the room and said (without a hello): "Heat-induced coronary vasospasm, Matthew. Turn off the norAd, he'll make his own blood pressure" (and that is a direct quote). He was right, thankfully....

None of the twenty odd staff working there, some up to forty years in the place, had ever seen anything like it.

Later came the fires, Nowra was isolated by road for almost a day and people were being evacuated by boat from the emergency centre set up at the Husky RSL.

I've rambled enough but you get the point.

For the birds, I'm trying BBs ice trick, and thinking about lining the aviaries.
I'll have to design better for the heat; when I've built I've always built to keep out the cold wind and rain (mostly Southerly here), but the wind that sucks your breath out and nails you to the wall is Northwesterly.

In humans, heat-related mortality correlates with nighttime minima much more closely than with nighttime maxima; that is to say, people die more often when the nights stay exceptionally warm than when the days are exceptionally hot.
The death rate rises above about 20 degrees and rises more sharply above twentyfive.
I don't know if this applies to birds as well, I am expert on only one species where our vets have to know about dozens.
Old people with smokers lungs or who are on heart medications are especially troubled, and unfortunately I expect a busy summer at work.

As the above indicates, peoples lives do get saved when they get help.
In heatwave or fire, as well as putting ice in for the birds and keeping the clean water up to the finchies, do take a moment to think about how the old folks next door are faring.
And sorry if I'm a bit rambling and emotional tonight, but guess what I've been doing today: treating an old man found by his neighbour in time.

...and so to bed.

Uhm,

We had our 'heatwave' over Christmas and New Years here. I think for about 7 or 8 days the max temperature for each day was over 37 or 38. A good few days reached over 40.. I know on New Years eve it reached about 45 under our patio..

We've just got retic set up to spray the birds every few hours and flush water bowls. That's it.
Touch wood, we've had no losses.

Its just starting here and along with it comes the ants .
Fussing over the birds makes them hotter ..Bottles of ice , a sprinkler or mister and a few fans here and there are helping but once set up at about 3pm I leave the birds alone except for a couple of walk arounds far enough away to see them but not make them fly .

The suspendeds are not a real bother as the birds sit on the water bowls which Ive changed for huge ceramic baking dishes ...branches thrown on the bottom of the suspended and watered keep them cool too .

As much as I worry I have to say whatever I breed are tough birds and cope with heat and cold extremes very well ....thus the importance of buying locally bred birds .