Brooder light dangers?

[yanmar1610d]

Just wondering if anyone on here has ever had a problem with brooder lights starting a fire? I have two lights in my brooder. Brooder is 2' x 6'. Both lights fixtures are the heavy duty type. One has a 250 red light and the other has a 120 white light. It has been very cold down in South GA, 19 - 22 this week. At night I have lowered the lights to about 12" from the bottom of the brooder to maintain 90 - 95 temp. By doing this the temp during the day gets way above 100. My brooder is outside in my chicken coop. Just don't want to burn it down. Just wondering if anyone has started a fire when using these type of lights?

 

[SillyChicken]

YES! Several bad fires already in the news this year (do a search here!) Not necessarily members here in the news lately, but some have in the past.

I wouldn't have mine that close to the bedding. Make sure it's secured by more than just the clamp, and secure the cord really well. Also put a good guard in place (hardware cloth) over the bulb, to keep the birds feathers from burning, they can also cause a fire or just get burned. Keep it free of dust.

 

[Judy]

Yes, people have. Be sure it is double secured, and don't trust those clamps they come with. Those heat lemps get hot and will set fire to bedding easily. Add chickens' dust factor and you have a real danger.

Also, don't exceed the recommended temps. Much better too cold than too hot.

I have some chicks just under 3 weeks old with a mama in an unheated, uninsulated, fairly open air coop. I often sit with them to watch. I have not once seen them go under mama to warm up since they were a week old. Today she tried twice to get them to, and they just kept running around. Like you, we just went through quite a cold snap, so they were running around in below freezing weather, by choice.

I never could keep a brooder at the recommended temps as the chicks would move to the other side of the brooder to cool off. I wound up brooding two batches at 10 degrees below recommended, at least.