well my three little babies are almost five weeks old! the time flies when your having fun! anyway i dont know, do they still need thier heat lamp? what is there temp supposed to be? and what temp does it need to be for them to stay out all night without a heat lamp?(we have no electric at the coop at this time). they have been staying out during the day (as long as im home!) in a little make shift pen, but i bring them back in at night, or leave them on the porch in the dog kennel with the heat lamp. they are absolutley loving it outside and im thinking it time for the "big girl" coop! im off to get 4 more today and well, all of them in the house may be a little much. oh, and its been well above 60 here most days and at least 45 at night, with an occasional cool night like last night, 35 or so!
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Hi there - I'm a newbie too but have some 4 week old chicks (not quite even!) that we kicked out of the house into their big-girl coop. They were just getting too darn stinky. The coop is insulated except for the ceiling and has 3 nice double-paned windows in it but still cold at night - when it's 30 outside it goes to about 40 in the coop. Anyway, what I did two days ago was to move their brooder and heat lamp (extension cord mess running that) into the coop and for the first day let them explore the whole coop but put them back in the box for the night so they'd get the idea that that was still where the happy warmness was happening. I'd read on this forum about chicks who huddled in a corner of the big coop away from the heat lamp during the cold first nights so figured that might be a way of 'training' them. Second night I brought down one side of the brooder (it's a lovely conglomeration of cardboard boxes - high society!) - this was last night - and this morning when I went out to check on them found that with freedom to roam the coop they all found their way back to the heat lamp. So that worked out. I want to ditch the heat lamp ASAP, though and plan on working with the temps at night and switching bulbs when it's in the 40s to a lower wattage. I must say, being pregnant and having sinus and cough issues lately has affected my sleeping patterns but putting the babies out into big girl world has messed with my dreams! My subconscious worries about them! They're obviously tough little girls though, nicely feathered and doing great.