Coop fire

[HippieChick76]

I told my husband that story when he wanted to put a light up in winter to keep the hens laying well. He came up with an awesome idea--he put up strings of Christmas lights! They are super-safe, and easy to string up wherever you need them. They don't heat, of course, but we didn't need that, as our coop is just big enough for the number of hens we have, and they are able to keep it pretty cozy with their own body heat.

What a cute idea! I need to figure out if ours will need heat during the winter or not. If they don't, that is a cute idea.

 

[AMA Chick]

So so sorry to hear about your coop fire...

 

[GrandmaChickie]

What a cute idea! I need to figure out if ours will need heat during the winter or not. If they don't, that is a cute idea.

Yes, they were a little freaked out at first, but then they really cottoned on to it. We ran the strings of lights in their house, and out through the air vents and across their run.

 

[OhThePlaces]

I am so sorry for your loss... I can't even imagine.

 

[chestypuller]

the hen sheltered the babies! I always thought the chicken were selfish by the way they eat, guess i was wrong.

 

[dancingflower68]

oh my gosh...I am so sorry for your loss, what a horrible thing to happen

. I am glad you went ahead and got some new babies... but I'm sure you are still very sad.

Thanks for sharing and I'm sorry you lost your animals and hard work. I'm starting to worry a bit about having a 250W heatlamp in close proximity to dry tinder (pine shavings) IN MY HOUSE!! This whole brooder thing (for FIVE weeks) is got me thinking about how I can be safe with this set up...it just seems a bit dodgy to me. What do people do to make it safe in their house? The heat lamp needs to be on all the time right?

Kiwiegg: Ditto that...My chick aren't here until the 24th, and I've only had my heatlamp on for a couple hours at a time to get the temp right, I can't imagine leaving it on ALL NIGHT!! I'm already worried about it, although I have discovered my best temp is with the lamp a couple inches above the hardware cloth top, which seems a little safer, previously it was touching! Eek!

 

[ChaoticCritters]

I bought a smoke detector and put it right next to the heat lamp when I have a brooder in the house.

 

[Jakoda]

omg, I am so sorry

This is one of my 'fears', I have baby chicks coming in June, and I am really paranoid about leaving a heat lamp on them when I'm not around and/nite time.
They will be in the house, and I'm hoping June will become warm so maybe I'll go with a regular light bulb , or I like using a heating pad idea I saw in another thread? (put it under your aquarium which mine will be in)

I LOVE the xmas lights idea...I have strings of them that I got from QVC that are on timers and run by batteries, so that would be perfect in the winter time

 

[kiwiegg]

Shoot! I did not think of hardware cloth under the light to stop it falling into the super-tinder como of pine shavings and feathers. Surely us worriers are missing something about the heat lamp/burning the house down scenario. No-one seems to talk about it much.

 

[mandelyn]

That's so sad! I had an almost fire one winter a couple of years ago, but I saw smoke from the house and the bulb was only 75w. So got there just in time.

I never use the 250w bulbs, no need for them really when an incandescent 100w regular bulb will do it. You have to watch those heavy duty bulbs, they'll melt their own holder if you got the plastic kind.

Brooder design here has the light on wire above the birds, then secured. Though I put ducks in a baby pool, and I made a bracket for the light then wired it as wall as clamped it to the bracket.

Usually what happens in the coop is they try to roost on it. If you have it higher than the roost, and stuck straight out from where it's clipped with a little head room, they think it's a sleeping spot. They'll try to roost on anything if it's higher than the actual roost.

Don't forget to dust the bulb every 3 days or so to get the dust off, that bird dust is flammable too on the higher watt bulbs.