Mama Heating Pad in the Brooder (Picture Heavy) - UPDATE

So I may have made my Mama Heating pad wrong, so I wanted to see what you guys think... I took hardware cloth and made a cave with it, attaching the sides to a board with another board in the front to help the cloth keep its shape and not collapse down. The Front of the cave is about 6 inches high in the center and slopes down toward each side. The back also slopes down. The heating pad is laid on top of the hardware cloth. I laid a towel over that to help hold the heat in. So far everything seems to be working fine, the little girls hang out under there and come out and eat and "play" and then they go back in to warm up etc. But in looking and reading more, it looks like maybe I should have mounted the Heating Pad along the underside of the hardware cloth so it actually touches the babies. I think I need to remove the towel on top, I just read where they may try to eat the towel and I don't want that to happen! Below is a picture, its not a very good picture, sorry. I will take a better pic of it today after work...

As in an earlier response, if it's working well, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Running in and out is a sure sign that they are comfortable. That said, do watch for piling along the sides in the event they do get chilled. @Fire Ant Farm had that issue and once the pad was smooshed down in the center and a couple of other minor adjustments made, that was solved.

I have never had a chick "eat" the towel, but I do just put a layer of Press ' Seal over the top of it and fold it under the edge to keep them from nibbling at the fringes on the old, threadbare towels I use.

The reason some of us have switched to using bungee cords and attaching the heating pad to the underside of the wire frame is because a few Broody Brigade members had chicks that got trapped between the wire and the pad. I think one actually died, if I remember right. So a lot of us adapted Beekissed's way. I don't know if this was a post you read or not, but I'll repost the link directly to it just in case. Oh, and welcome! Your dues are paid!

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/956958/mama-heating-pad-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update/450

Thank you, Blooie. They all seem happy. I did lose one this morning but I think it was from shipping stress or just nature taking its course. She wouldn't really eat or drink. I gave her nutria-drench and that seemed to perk her a little, but she still wouldn't eat or drink. This morning she was just laying there and wouldn't move. I took a syringe and gave her water etc, but she wouldn't swallow. She died about 15 mins later. I don't think it had anything to do with my set up, seeing as how all the others are just as happy as can be and eating like crazy.

lewlew said:

Thank you, Blooie. They all seem happy. I did lose one this morning but I think it was from shipping stress or just nature taking its course. She wouldn't really eat or drink. I gave her nutria-drench and that seemed to perk her a little, but she still wouldn't eat or drink. This morning she was just laying there and wouldn't move. I took a syringe and gave her water etc, but she wouldn't swallow. She died about 15 mins later. I don't think it had anything to do with my set up, seeing as how all the others are just as happy as can be and eating like crazy.

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I am so sorry about your loss, unfortunately we can do everything right and still lose one here and there.

First day out with the big girls and the panic doors. I have one tyrant (hen) but the others are pretty much OK with their existence, as long as they're not interested in what the big girls are interested in.

Here they are taking a break together in safety. And they do love still congregating on the MHP!

I switched to the MHP last year and I'm never going back. It just streamlines and makes easy what used to be the problems of housing and integrating the chicks. Out of the incubator, I put the chicks and their MHP in a 'chick box' (2'x3' chicken wire box) and put it in the coop. The chicks have their own pop door and have access to the ground as soon as they can navigate the ramp. They have a safety pen (plastic garden fencing) outside for two weeks. I then raise the safety pen just enough so they can leave the pen and explore, but have a safety zone to scoot back to if the hens get snippity. At about four weeks, I remove the safety pen outside and inside I raise the chick box and move it back from the pop door. Everyone can use the pop door at this point, but the chicks still have a safe place inside the coop. They can come in the pop door and scoot right under the chick box. Somewhere along the process, depending on the weather and feathering, the MHP goes away, but I leave the frame in for a huddle box. Right from the incubator, the chicks and the olders can all see and be seen, so integration is seamless.

Now, that said, I have comparison pictures. A friend and I went in on some eggs from a breeder a few months ago. I set my eggs a couple of days before she did hers and the pictures are taken a day apart, so figure my chick is 6 weeks old and her chick is 5.5 weeks in the pics. I know she feeds her chickens a good quality, name brand food, as do I, so all the chicks have been raised on chick feed that is at least 22% protein. This is not a scientific study, but I found it interesting how much more feathered out my chick -- raised with the MHP -- is than the other chick, raised with a brooder lamp.


And this shot is just because they're so nosy:

A lot of us think that MHP helps chicks feather out faster....the fact they are only being warmed up when THEY think they need it rather than having their entire environment seems to be the factor. Your chicks are gorgeous. Oh, and payment on dues made!

Glad that integration is going so well for you and for @MichelleT ! I think the less fussing around with our chicks we do, and the more time they spend observing flock behavior and learning to be chickens, the easier it is, although we still need to be observant.

Well, if I wasn't sure about this new BYC platform before I'm sold on it now! There have been several discussions on this thread about maybe letting it die out and starting with a new one, given the many changes that have evolved in setting up MHP. Writing an article was also suggested, with a link to this thread in it, but I had already done a BYC article on this system when I started the thread, and would have had to delete that one and rewrite.

This new platform allows for editing of older posts!! Isn't that fantastic???? And I took full advantage of that! If you look on page one of Mama Heating Pad now, you'll see at the bottom of the first post a link to the page where @Beekissed showed her setup - the one many of us are using now.

This is great for us....and will save potential Broody Brigade members a lot of confusion in trying to set up theirs. Three cheers for the new platform!!!

I want to add to Blooie's Thumbs up on the new platform. I am still waiting for the albums to come back but honestly I am not really missing them at this point.

Another thing I like is the fact that the images dont repeat in a quoted posts but are there in link form so if you want you can look at them.

Thats got to be a HUGE bandwidth saver.

deb "Very long time Lurker on this thread"

perchie.girl said:

I want to add to Blooie's Thumbs up on the new platform. I am still waiting for the albums to come back but honestly I am not really missing them at this point.

Another thing I like is the fact that the images dont repeat in a quoted posts but are there in link form so if you want you can look at them.

Thats got to be a HUGE bandwidth saver.

deb "Very long time Lurker on this thread"

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Add me to the list of living the new platform!