Do you see how all the chicks are holding their wings out from their bodies? That means they are all much too warm. Forget about what the 'rules' for temperature are for chicks. Yours are much too warm.Here are the chicks, all the birds have been walking around eating, drinking, and doing what chicks do and then there is the one that has been gaping, (that is the one laying down in the corner in one of the pictures) which this one will lay down for a while, do the gaping or gasping every once in a while and then it'll get up and go eat, drink, walk around a minute and then goes and lays back down.
You have to take into condideration, when using plastic storage totes like that for brooders, and you use a head lamp, there is no way to just hear one spot. Those sides actually bounce the head off and the whole kind of has an oven effect. They don't have a cool spot to escape to. First things first, get those chicks in a larger brooder. One that enables the chicks to have enough room to really run around. That way, you can have one corner be warm, and the rest of the space will be room temp. Storage tubs are just too small to provide a proper cool zone and chicks outgrow them quickly. Also, the bulb that came with the head lamp is likely too powerful. You can switch the bulb out for a regular 100 watt bulb, to reduce the amount of heat being out out.I thought they were hot at first too, but they aren't going over to the cool side of the incubator to get out from under the lamp. When they lay down to sleep they lay down under the heat lamp all together (in this picture they're all under the heat lamp minus one at the water). I figured that since they're all laying under the lamp together they weren't hot since they lay next to each other and they're not sleeping over in the cool end. I will move my lamp up even more and see what happens. Thank you again for everyone's input!
