What a great article! I'm so grateful to have happened upon and read it.
After not having chickens since childhood and finally moving to a new property where we could easily have lots of chickens, I got my first batch of 28 pretty little ladies. I knew I didn't want to use a typical heat lamp due to some of the issues you mentioned (and feel so enlightened by the others you'd mentioned that I hadn't realized!) so I purchased a couple of ceramic heat emitting bulbs. Still being paranoud, I rigged it to be foolproof... Wrong!
Despite clamping the light into the brooder and hanging it from a rope and s-hook and putting a window screen over the browser to catch it "just in case", all my efforts were in vain. I believe a frisky gal must have flown up, hit the screen which bumped the light and all avalanched into the brooder. It could have been that way ten minutes or as much as an hour when I found it. All babies were huddled in the opposite corner of the brooder and the thermometer that landed under the lamp said 120º (though they were touching so I'm sure it was a false reading). None the less, the pine shavings smelled and felt hot. All girls lived and nothing burned BUT had that happened in the middle of the night it could have been a totally different story and we could have lost our girls and our tiny cabin. Having no income while we're starting our farm I thought the heat plates were too expensive. Wrong again. We now have two and they're worth every penny. We just got another batch of babies (hatched Monday) and they already seem happier and healthier.
I'd never heard of a wool hen and am definitely going to do that too. You're an amazing wealth of knowledge and I'm so grateful to you.
