Do I have everything I need to start?

[jeria]

Thanks I can use all the help I can get right now. Honestly hadn't thought about it as I haven't good luck with the newer auto heating pads with the useless shut off and my old ones don't work anymore. They don't even help me sleep with my old neck injury or sinus headaches because they turn off after an hour or so. I will remember that for future. Right now, I'm set up and ready for chicks except for adding food and water.

How do you reduce the heat to get them ready for the coop?

 

[Blooie]

I'm not the best person to ask, since I haven't used heat lamps in so long. Mama Heating Pad and the chicks do all that for me and they are totally off heat before 4 weeks old, even outside in Wyoming when it's still cold and snowy.

Accepted wisdom is to keep moving the lamp up and reducing the heat in the brooder that way. When it's warmer and they are getting more feathered, you can turn it off during the day, extending the time it's off until they are without it all day long. But again, I'm not the best person to ask because I'm simply not one who uses them. Oh, I know who could help.... my friend @azygous is really good at all things chick. I just tagged her and maybe she'll pop in. She also uses Mama Heating Pad, but always has good advice for new chick owners....

And @Ol Grey Mare - she uses MHP now but I think she was a heat lamp user before.

 

[jeria]

I really didn't know there was an option to heat lamps until today. So awesome to know to know that for the future. So now awaiting chicks and hoping they survive the journey. My last foray into keeping chicks we had a local hatchery so went and picked them up on the designated day. It is no longer as the couple who owned were in their 70's at the time (1980's) and sadly no one in their family was interested in chickens. They were such a nice couple.

 

[azygous]

You rang? Here I is.

Heat lamps. If you're going to be using one, the best thing to do is to calibrate it to the right height for the proper temperature before the chicks arrive.

Get a thermometer and lay it down on the brooder floor on top of the bedding right under the heat lamp. The heat lamp should be at the far side of as large a brooder as you can find. The chicks will need a large cool space to shed excess heat. Move the lamp up or down until it reads 90F. That's a good starting point. This is the only time you will need to use a thermometer. From this point on, your chicks are the thermometer.

When you get the chicks installed, watch their behavior. If they are all huddled right under the lamp, move it a tad lower. If they're all hanging out at the far fringes and not spending much time under the lamp, then they want it cooler. Move the lamp up until you see the chicks covering the whole brooder with their activity.

Keep in mind, for all practical purposes, you are weaning your chicks off heat from the first week. Your goal is to get them feathered out and off the heat lamp by the end of their fourth week. In order for this to happen, you need to keep the heat to the minimum that the chicks require to be comfortable, reducing it gradually every few days by raising the lamp or swapping the 250 watt bulb for a 100 watter. Let the chicks' behavior be your guide as to what is needed but keep making it gradually cooler.

In conjunction with this program of heat reduction and weaning, it's very beneficial to bring the chicks outdoors for play time beginning at the end of their second week. Choose nice, calm days for these outings, watching the chicks for signs of chilling, and returning them to their brooder when you see it.

Gradually extend these outings so that by age three weeks, they are spending several hours outdoors. By age four weeks, they may be spending all day outside without any heat source. By age five weeks, they can be sleeping in their coop with no heat.

That's how I did it. But now it's so simple and easy to just brood them outdoors to begin with, and they acclimatize in place. No fuss. No bother.

 

[Blooie]

Oh, thank you, my friend. I no longer have the confidence in my heat lamp days to advise anyone. I absolutely didn't want to mess this up.

 

[jeria]

azygous, I've already done the thermometer check yesterday. 90 on one end of the box 80 on the other food and water will go on the cooler side. Planning on switching to a bigger box in a couple weeks as they will grow quickly. Thanks for a providing a good timetable as that will help a lot. I hadn't seen that info before.

Love the suggestions about getting them outside. Not sure about calm days though, this time of year it's rare not to be windy. Maybe warm and not too windy? I do need to still make a security top for it in case kitty would get into the room. Not sure what she would do.

 

[azygous]

Regarding that narrow temperature spread, that indicates your brooder isn't quite large enough if it's that warm all over. 90 and 80 leaves little leeway for chicks to shed excess heat. It won't be a problem the first week, but as soon as they start getting feathers, you run the risk of them getting too hot. Think about how you would feel in a room that warm if you were wearing a down vest you couldn't take off when you started to feel too hot in it. Our body temps and chicks' body temps aren't all that different.

This is one reason I like cardboard appliance boxes as brooders for indoor brooding. They can be fashioned so as to put a couple together with a pass-through cut into the common wall, and one can be warm while the other one much cooler where the babies can cool off when they absorb too much heat on the other side. That solves the problem of space as they grow, too. You can see a picture of what mine looked like in my article on outdoor brooding. (See sig line below for the link)

When you begin taking the chicks outside, try to rig up a windbreak. If the temp is over 70, they'll be fine with a little breeze. I know about spring winds. It's that way here, too.

 

[lazy gardener]

RE: heat lamps, you can also step down to a lower wattage bulb, and you can put it on a dimmer switch which will decrease the heat for them. Wishing you the best with your chicks.

 

[lazy gardener]

We tend to pamper our chicks too much. Consider that broody hen has her chicks (starting at 48 hours old) out in what ever the weather du jour happens to be. It could be rainy, cold, or windy, to the point that I've seen chickens get blown off their feet! No matter the weather, those chicks toddle after Mama all day long. They duck under her now and then to warm up, but otherwise, they are playing and romping in the weather. The only thing I'd not do with artificially brooded chicks is expose them to wet grass/rain. It's amazing what a bit of a wind break will do. My adult birds are out taking sun baths in 20* weather in their sun room which is completely opened on the west end, and has copious ventilation at the gables. (simply using tarp and poly to wrap part of their run.)

 

[jeria]

Thanks all, makes sense to me. I was thinking about switching to a bigger box this morning since with the waterer and feeder in there it is pretty cramped. So bigger it will be, easy to do.