Brooding outside with heat plate

[Pygora]

Hello! I've been reading up on wool hens and brooding outside. I have a brooder plate and am planning to use it outside, here is my plan:

Child-size nylon tent (zips up, simple type for sleepovers, not mountaineering) outdoors in a secure coop with a roof. It gets down to the 40s F at night here. I put hemp shavings in the tent and a heat plate, snaked the cord through a little ventilation hole at the top of the tent. Feeder and waterer in the tent as well.

I intellectually understand that chicks in nature under a real hen could live in these conditions, but am looking for reassurance before I try this. I will have a small group (10-16 chicks) and can only keep them inside for a couple of days before they need to go out.

What do you think?

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I brooded chicks outside in Utah in February with a heat lamp so I am a big fan of outdoor brooding. I put a cardboard box in a big dog kennel then draped some old blanket over the parts furthest from the heat lamp. It sounds dangerous when I type it but it wasn’t lol. My point is I don’t see a problem with your plan though I would skip buying a tent to ruin and just use a cardboard box. They will outgrow it quickly and the poop situation gets real fast. At least the cardboard box you can just throw away after. Do you have a picture of your coop?

 

[Pygora]

Thanks for the reassurance. Here is the tent already in the coop! All new setup, this will be my first flock at this place hence the green grass to start

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Oh that’s super cute! I have to wonder why you aren’t just putting them in the actual coop instead of the tent?

 

[kattabelly]

Thanks for the reassurance. Here is the tent already in the coop! All new setup, this will be my first flock at this place hence the green grass to start

Does that hardware cloth extend under the wooden frame where it sits at ground level? It kind of looks like something's been trying to dig in by the door.

And how much ventilation does that tent have?

 

[Pygora]

Oh that’s super cute! I have to wonder why you aren’t just putting them in the actual coop instead of the tent?

Does that hardware cloth extend under the wooden frame where it sits at ground level? It kind of looks like something's been trying to dig in by the door.

And how much ventilation does that tent have?

The digging was done by me, when I was burying hardware cloth around the perimeter of the coop. It's a Champion Coop from Wooden Wonders of Maine.

The tent is in the covered run part. There is an insulated coop above. My first thought was to brood the chicks right in the insulated coop, but I was advised that the chicks would hop out and injure themselves when I opened the door. So my thought was to work with gravity and start them in the tent, start letting them out into the 8' x 12' covered run area when they get a little bigger, then remove the tent and let them discover the ramp to the coop upstairs (where nesting boxes and roosts are.)

There is a mesh vent at the top of the tent, and the side access door has two flaps, mesh and nylon. I got this idea from watching videos of people using tents as brooders - the kid's tent I got was cheaper than the pop up brooder pens sold specifically for chickens!

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

So if your coop is properly ventilated I still see no reason they can’t just go in the coop. I say this because it will make coop-training them at night a LOT easier in the future. And they time frame when they could potentially hurt themselves falling down the ramp is pretty short-maybe a week or two. So if the coop is well ventilated and you can get the brooder plate in there I would just put them up there and close the door to the ramp or cover it with a piece of hardware cloth. It will save you a lot of headache when they are ready for you take the heat off-instead of having to crawl in there and teach them to use the ramp every night…possibly for weeks…you can just remove the heat. They might still want to stay up late but it won’t be because they don’t know how to use the ramp or because they don’t associate the coop with sleeping.

 

[Pygora]

So if your coop is properly ventilated I still see no reason they can’t just go in the coop. I say this because it will make coop-training them at night a LOT easier in the future. And they time frame when they could potentially hurt themselves falling down the ramp is pretty short-maybe a week or two. So if the coop is well ventilated and you can get the brooder plate in there I would just put them up there and close the door to the ramp or cover it with a piece of hardware cloth. It will save you a lot of headache when they are ready for you take the heat off-instead of having to crawl in there and teach them to use the ramp every night…possibly for weeks…you can just remove the heat. They might still want to stay up late but it won’t be because they don’t know how to use the ramp or because they don’t associate the coop with sleeping.

Getting the brooder plate in there - that is a toughie. I hear you about having to train them to go upstairs. Fortunately the run is walk-in height. My goal is to spend a lot of time in there socializing them anyway.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

That makes sense. It isn’t socializing that the issue though-it’s the way they get used to sleeping. And for some reason they always end up sleeping where they are hardest to reach. In a pile. In the corner of the run. Under the coop. Then you’re crawling in poop to get them. you don’t have to deal with that. My current batch which I got as pullets I managed to avoid that by putting a box in the run before dusk and they would crawl in there to sleep and I would just pick up the box and move them to the coop. That was even with older hens to show them the ramp. It took about three days of doing this to get them to go up the ramp to go to sleep. I am all about making chicken keeping as easy as possible because I am very lazy lol

 

[rural mouse]

I raise chicks in the coop as a regular thing now (last 3 years). Overnight temps routinely get down into the 50sF with occasional dips into 40sF during the summer.

They integrate in with the flock who does the raising, even without a broody. If the flock feels it's too cold, they won't let the babies out of the coop. Even when it's warm, they won't let them drift too far and at least 1 adult is on babysitting duty. Babies quickly figure out to go running back to heat pad for a quick warm up. As they start trying to roost 2-4 weeks old, I move the heat up with them. When they spend several consecutive nights NOT snuggled up to it, I turn it off, but don't remove it for another week (covers if they do snuggle up and / or have an extra chilly night)