Like many have said, keep them cool & well watered in this heat. I did have six red Sexlinks & six black Sexlinks to start the year out. Game camera showed two different raccoons got three chicks in the 2'x4' brooder pen at 1 month of age by breaking through the chicken wire after digging under my pole barn sliding door. At 3 months of age and being moved into the large pen, found one dead inside. Next afternoon heard commotion from the chicken pen and ran down to discover a huge black snake wrapped around a half grown hen. Looked like a black basketball. Come to find out, there were two black snakes living in the insulation I had in the ceiling of the chicken house. Last month, I found two partially eaten chickens outside of the chicken pen, raccoons again. They tore through the chicken wire that I had wrapped around the cattle panels that I used for the outdoor run. So, I wound up with five living laying hens, eight dead raccoons, four dead opossums, & three doubly dead black snakes 5 1/2, 6, & 6 1/2 feet respectively. I just purchased six Isa Brown peeps from TSC last week.....Here we go again.
Go get some hardware cloth and replace the chicken wire. More expensive but "usually" will stop the raccoons.
