Chicks and goslins dieing suddenly

[chevydmax04]

I have read a few posts here about people loosing chicks and goslings when they are still young. I have been doing meat chickens for a few years so I buy 25-50 chicks at a time. Prior to the last 2 batchs I generally lost 10-20% of the chicks by the time they got big enough to release with the other chickens. These last two batch's first was 4 turkeys second was 50 broiler chicks I lost 0 out of both batchs. The only change I made was going from a heat lamp or lamps to an 500 watt infrared heater. The difference is the IR heater throws a much larger area of heat because it is up higher, therefore the chicks are not packing together and trampling and smothering each other to get into the small area of warmth a heat lamp puts out. Costs a little more to run the IR heater but having more of my chicks survive makes up for the additional cost.

Mine is similar to this one except mine is a single heating element.

http://www.infraredheaters.com/images/ffh.ht51.jpg

 

[jenjscott]

I have been looking at alternatives to the lights. I like to raise mine up and cover one end of the brooder so that its more of a general warming. I want to get mine night-time light free for a more natural cycle. I don't think they need to eat all night anyway. I have also been looking at ceramic type heaters.