In today's world of mechanized farming, chickens rely on electricity to drive the machines that bring them food and water, collect their eggs, transport their waste and power the lights under which egg-laying hens can bask up to 16 hours a day. Most importantly, electricity powers the fans and swamp coolers that make chicken farming possible in inland counties up and down California. The environments in these chicken houses are entirely artificial. Humidity in the air is critical to a chicken's health because of its respiratory system. A chicken breathes differently than a human.
People force air into their lungs and it automatically comes out.
Chickens have to force the air out. When they breathe, they have to have air flow. Agriculture experts have spent the last year recommending farmers add backup generators that can produce electricity needed in a blackout to milk cows, irrigate fields and chill produce before it's shipped to market. For poultry farmers, generators are an absolute must, said Jim Thompson, a cooperative extension engineer with the University of California, Davis biological and agricultural engineering department. But many smaller producers do not, which has some terrified by the prospect of the repeated and perhaps sustained blackouts that are all but guaranteed to strike California this summer.