10/07/2026
To all my chicken, keeping friends in the path of the storm coming through the gulf. I’ve seen a lot of people asking about what to do with their girls, as this may be their first hurricane with chickens. As a Florida resident were used to hurricanes so here’s my two cents.
If you have a run that is not secure down to post that you cemented into the ground and you have tarps or plastic sheeting. This can be very dangerous in high winds for your girls. Think about a trampoline that you saw on the video flying away to its new home down the neighborhood. Same thing with your run that’s got a tarp over it. You’re creating a lift effect. Now I know it’s too late to go back and cement them in so what do we do?
I personally will not leave my girls out in a hurricane. Just like I wouldn’t leave my dog in a dog house outside in a hurricane. My girls get locked in the coop or if it’s over a cat 2 in the house for the duration of the storm. Our coop is cemented into the ground as well as my run. If yours isn’t, I would highly suggest a $20 mesh tent off of Amazon and bring them inside. I put puppy pads down in the bottom along with some shavings.
But there’s other things to consider besides your run being blown away with your girls in it.  Flying debris can be just as dangerous. As well as drowning in flash floods or even just several inches of water. When several chickens huddle together sometimes the weaker or littler ones get stood on, sat on and can’t get their beaks out out of an inch of water and drowned. 
If you run was thoughtfully built under a tree for shade is it gonna withstand the tree coming down from a lightning strike, heavy winds or soaked ground where the roots let go. All things you typically see with a hurricane.
For those of you on well water when your power goes out how are you going to refill your waterers? We all think about water for flushing our toilets doing dishes, but don’t forget to fill up extra jugs for your girls water for up to a week sometimes. Fill up your washing machine fill up your bathtub. Fill up every bucket that you have that has a lid you can keep clean. We also freeze Ziplocs of water.
Good luck to everyone in the path of the storm. Pics below of my tent off Amazon and a example of a run that didn’t make it through a storm (not mine)
