Does anyone else think anything over 90* is excessive, not necessary?

[Crazy Maizie]

I've not brooded a lot, but the times I have brooded I didn't start at 90°. Initially, I tried to get the temps to the recommended, but with my setup I couldn't. In fact the last time I brooded I had 2 chicks at around 78° to start. I placed a piece of fleece in the brooder in case they couldn't get warm enough. They loved the fleece and thrived with the temps provided. It was summer and I got them outside as much as possible. They had their own set up within the run. Integration went rather smoothly.

 

[SandyRiverChick]

I've not brooded a lot, but the times I have brooded I didn't start at 90°. Initially, I tried to get the temps to the recommended, but with my setup I couldn't. In fact the last time I brooded I had 2 chicks at around 78° to start. I placed a piece of fleece in the brooder in case they couldn't get warm enough. They loved the fleece and thrived with the temps provided. It was summer and I got them outside as much as possible. They had their own set up within the run. Integration went rather smoothly.

I'll have to try the fleece, good idea! This (below) is one of the best articles I've read ever since reading Blooie's thread on Mommy Hut about 7years ago. This person's experience is precisely mine. I'm moving from Garage to Coop this time (next week.) You know starting with rescuing the little peeps from my local feed store hot lights, my car is not 100* lol. I put the box in the car for the 45min. drive. Then when I get home, I fiddle with heat a little bit but the thermometer really never goe's past *80 and I'm anxious to just get them to what should be completely normal around *70. Having the option to warm up in something whether it's fleece or a heat pad is all they ever need. I'd be alot more worried about over-heating then of "Under-heating."
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...and-start-raising-your-chicks-outdoors.71995/

 

[SandyRiverChick]

I think as a general rule that 90 to start is fine, and that dropping temps down more aggressively is the way to go (5 degrees every week takes way too long), but I also brood outdoors now so ambient temperature is whatever it happens to be. I lower the heat on my heating pad every 5 days or so, depending on temperatures outside, feathering on the chicks, and how much/little they want to use the heat source.

Sounds perfect, thank you! I'm finally after all these years starting outside. I feel really confident that they a) won't over-heat and b) have a nice warm fake mommy to get under Just read a great fleece blanket idea too!

 

[Bryce Thomas]

I live in AZ and I just leave my brooder in the garage, even during the coldest of winter nights the lil birbies are just fine

 

[Crazy Maizie]

I'll have to try the fleece, good idea! This (below) is one of the best articles I've read ever since reading Blooie's thread on Mommy Hut about 7years ago. This person's experience is precisely mine. I'm moving from Garage to Coop this time (next week.) You know starting with rescuing the little peeps from my local feed store hot lights, my car is not 100* lol. I put the box in the car for the 45min. drive. Then when I get home, I fiddle with heat a little bit but the thermometer really never goe's past *80 and I'm anxious to just get them to what should be completely normal around *70. Having the option to warm up in something whether it's fleece or a heat pad is all they ever need. I'd be alot more worried about over-heating then of "Under-heating."
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...and-start-raising-your-chicks-outdoors.71995/

Oh yes, I followed bits of that article when brooding mine and of course Blooie's tips. I also looked at mama hens made from fleece and wool. I did what worked for me and my set up and what I felt comfortable with.

 

[MadamContrary]

As others have said, I watch the birds not the temps and follow their cues. I'm in a hot climate so I usually have chicks off the heat towards the middle of week 3. I brood indoors for the first couple days to be sure everyone is eating and drinking, and there's no issues with legs and feet, then I move them out to a small prefab coop with a heat plate in the sleeping area. I keep an eye on them to make sure they know where everything is, haven't had any chick losses yet. Sometimes I do have to put them all to bed for a few days in a row if they snuggle pile on the ground instead of going upstairs, but that more for my own peace of mind.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I don't care what temp you have (long as it's not over 105 or so) I just care that the chicks can escape it.
It can be sweltering at one end...but it needs a cool zone.

I agree. Some of my birds are little heat demons and need to be a bit warmer than their siblings, especially when babies. my sebrights in particular almost never left the warm half of the brooder up until they got booted outside

 

[Blooie]

I have found that chicks do a much better job of deciding what they need than we do. I use Mama Heating Pad exclusively, and I start my chicks outdoors when our springtime chick season temps are in the 20s, dropping into the teens. When I raised my first chicks using it, I started the Mama Heating Pad thread just to document what I was doing, why I was doing it, what I learned, what I modified, and how things went. I didn’t start out to “teach” anything. Those chicks were in the house much longer than I planned when hubby had emergency surgery and we were delayed in setting up the outdoor brooder pen.

Early on in the thread, @azygous asked me what the temperature was under the cave. Shoot, I didn’t know. I’d never measured it. All I knew what that I had happy, thriving chicks that explored, played King of the Mountain on top of MHP, slept quietly straight through the night, and seemed very happy and healthy to me. Well, the temperature on the floor of the heating pad cave was something like 82.5, if I recall, and the room they were in was 69 degrees. Holy smokes!! According to the “experts” my chicks should have been dead. They’d already been living with MHP for over a week and were far from dead. They knew exactly what they needed, when they needed it, and how to get it.

Do I think the recommended temperatures for chicks are overstated? Absolutely!! In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and go one step farther and say that that old 95 the first week, 90 the second, etc., etc., is downright ridiculous and so stressful to new chick owners who just can’t seem to fine-tune that heat lamp. After that first batch went outside to live at about 11 days old, I was amazed that even with ambient temps at that time in the 30s, they behaved exactly as they had in the house. They ducked under MHP for a quick warm-up, or if they got spooked, for a quick catnap, or as the sun set to bed down for the night. That’s when I realized that if a 2 pound hen can successfully raise her broods of chicks outdoors even when winter winds were howling and snow was falling, and do it without charts, experts, books, or websites telling her she’s doing it all wrong, why do we do it so differently and think we’re doing it better? She doesn’t heat their entire environment. She doesn’t have night lights under her wings. She doesn’t see to it that they eat 24/7.

And by the way, while I have no scientific proof, I believe that the 2 factors of overheating and constant eating are the leading causes of pasty butt in chicks. With the light on all the time with no respite, they are constantly close to dehydration. Those are pretty tiny little bodies and they can’t take in as much water as they’re losing to heat. And being awake all night long, what else is there to do but eat? Their little digestive systems are just as immature as their feather growth or any of their other systems. Yet there they are, overloading those still-developing digestive systems with food that they really don’t need and haven’t completely digested before they’re eating again. Under a broody hen, they’d eat what they need during the day, and when they went to sleep at night - in pitch darkness - those little crops and tummies have time to digest what they’ve eaten slowly, as nature intended. When the sun comes up they are cleaned out and ready to take in what they need for growth and nourishment without digestive overload.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Years of successfully brooding batch after batch of chicks outdoors with no heat lamps, no 90 degree requirements, and no exposure to any kind of artificial lights, in temperatures that make experts cringe, and with only 3 cases of pasty butt (those 3 chicks came to us with pasty butt…two or 3 cleanups and it was over) isn’t exactly scientific evidence, but experience has to count for something.

 

[NatJ]

Do I think the recommended temperatures for chicks are overstated? Absolutely!! In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and go one step farther and say that that old 95 the first week, 90 the second, etc., etc., is downright ridiculous and so stressful to new chick owners who just can’t seem to fine-tune that heat lamp.

I always understood those old recommendations to be the temperature right by the heat lamp, with the rest of the brooder cooler. (My sources: a selection of hatchery websites, state cooperative extension sites, and books from several decades ago that were based on such guidelines.)

Using a heat lamp to warm just one area, while the rest of the brooder is cooler, lets the chicks move back and forth between cooler and warmer areas, similar to what your heating pad allows.

But that requires quite a bit of space, more than most people are willing to provide in their house (or even in some chicken coops!)

 

[azygous]

This should belie the 90F mandate for new chicks. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rcup-chicks-shunning-their-heat-cave.1494237/ How about two chicks less than one week old sleeping outside their heat cave and surviving a night in the low 40s? Another night, a week later, they spent huddled, just the two of them, outside their heat cave (not sitting on top of it) when it got into the 30s. They survived just fine, although I took special pains to get them to stay under their heat frame at night from then on. It seemed these chicks were indifferent to needing heat.

It should be noted that as long as chicks are consuming plenty of calories that go toward creating body heat, the less heat they need to regulate their heat loss. Perhaps my two baby chicks had very efficient metabolic systems. But most chicks need far less heat than those ridiculous brooder heat guidelines would have you believe. In early days when I was using a heat lamp, I would raise it so the maximum heat print was just 80F for the first week and it appeared that was as high as the chicks wanted it.