Do you have to put your brooder babies to bed every night?

Every night around dusk, my chicks start cheeping and going crazy trying to get out of the brooder. I simply cover them with a towel and I guess this simulates mother hen covering with her body.

Does this occur with anyone else's chicks? am I doing something wrong?

P.s. I don't use a heat lamp I use a CHE and open the curtains for them I the morning after the sun comes up, so they have a natural day/night cycle

 

Sorry, a CHE is a ceramic heat emitter. I've used blue towels as their nest since the day I brought them home. During the day they go to the nest to nap. If I have the door open they will fly onto my lap and nestle under my arms to snooze.
I guess they just prefer to sleep out of the brooder for night time.
I just moved them to this new style of broader with a door, before they were in an aquarium and would do the same thing at dusk, going crazy at the glass. I thought maybe this would be beyter, but now I'm afraid they are going to hurt themselves sticking their heads/necks through the dog crate door. It's a plastic crate not a metal wire one.

 

They do get very hot. I don't have a protective wire over it, I plan on doing a way with it completely w/in the week. I also have a heating pad under the crate. The CHE is also on a thermostat.

 

I didn't think it was that special so I haven't made a thread for it, lol. I just took my 10 years of herpetology/herpetoculture and applied it to my chicken brooding. The thermostat is a (used to be called A-life, now it's like zilla or something) simple dial intended for use in a reptile enclosure. Cant remember the price, but they are super cheap compared to my actual reptile enclosure thermostats. The heating pad is an old walgreens brand w/o safety cut off. It's all the way on high, but if you get a newer one, it gets WAY hot, even on the lowest setting, so I'm afraid that would burn right through the plastic!
Any time you use a heating pad under something, be sure there is air flow around it to prevent hot spots/burning/fire hazard.

If you want a cheap and easy rheostat for your CHE you can buy a lamp dimmer at Lowes where the lamp plug plugs into the Dimmer and the dimmer into the wall. You can also "make" one with a different type of dimmer (the kind you put in the wall) but that requires cutting the cord and reassembling it with the dimmer in the circuit. You would use a junction box to hold all the wires and the dimmer together.
This requires a bit of electrical know-how and is easy but if someone isn't comfortable, it could be a hazard so safer to go with the plug in version.
This way when you need to lower the temperature, you can just turn down the dimmer.

I've been debating on creating a broader using calorique flexxwatt heat tape, but I'm not sure how much of that stuff I have left hanging around.