Brooder help, please

[KBGChicken]

How many watts is the bulb?  In a 70 degree room, you can get by with a 40 - 60 W bulb.  Be sure it is an incandescent bulb, and not a fluorescent bulb.  Then you'll need to get a thermometer.  Shine the light into one end of the brooder.  At one week old, the chicks can be at 85 - 90 degrees, but if they huddle under the bulb, try to burrow under each other, or if they stand under the bulb instead of laying down, they are cold.  Lower the bulb a bit.  If they stay away from the bulb, if they lay down and spread their wings, if they pant, they are too warm.  Raise the bulb a bit.  cold chicks will get sick and die.  Over heated chicks will die before they get a chance to get sick.  Good luck getting your heat adjusted.  This is the hardest part of raising chicks.

It's a 250 watt bulb what should I do? Should I just keep lowering and raising it until they like it? I take it out of the plug for like one hour and put it back and they seem fine right now..

 

[Judy]

As lazy gardener already said, you only need a regular old fashioned (incandescent) light bulb in a 70 degree room. 40 or 60 watts should be fine. And you can probably turn that off in a couple of weeks.

I know the charts say 90 degrees the first week, then reduce, but I have never had a batch of chicks tolerate this much heat. They would run away from it and stay where the temp was about 10 degrees less. IMO they only need that higher heat til they recover from shipping stress, which usually only takes a day or two.

You've gotten lots of good advice here already. Watch how your chicks behave. If they run around all over the brooder and play, and quietly cheep, they are fine. And next time, have a thermmometer, because no one can tell ou how man inches to have the heat from the brooder floor. Ever brooder is different. Or, just trust your ability to gauge their behavior.