Duh! Thermometer mystery explained

[elmo]

I have a digital thermometer in my brooder that I can read on a remote set up next to my bed. For the last week I've been waking up frequently in the night to check the temperature, and have been aghast at unexplained spikes in temperature, way up to 99 degrees! I lurch out of bed, dial down the lamp, return to bed, check the temp, rats! now it's too low! and the whole cycle repeats.

I couldn't figure it out. When empty, the brooder stays steady pretty much where I set it. Fully on, the ceramic bulb heats up to a toasty 95, but since our chicks are now a week old, I've dialed it back to around 88-90.

Well, finally I figured out what was going on. The digital thermometer is a little box that I put on the towel under the brooder lamp. Sometimes the chicks cuddle up against this box, and that makes the temperature spike.

Mystery solved. Maybe now I can get some sleep. I'm pooped out.

 

[mirime]

oh thanks for this!!

 

[basicliving]

Thanks for the chuckle. That is too funny! Now maybe those babies can get some sleep and not have to worry about that crazy person playing with the temperature all night

 

[Labeedoor]

LOL I experienced the same thing here. Though not digitally. Then I read a post saying the birds will regulate their own temps. Just have the warmth available to them and they'll use it when they need it. My sleeping schedule was very erratic the 1st 2 weeks of this new adventure also. Thanks for the laugh.

 

[daisy_dukers]

I had something similar happen, evertime the chicks sat on the temp probe, it would spike by 10 degrees....Mine would show actual, min, max and everyday the max reading was pegged at 105 from sometime in the last 24 hours....

Eventually i just sat there watching the temp readout and the chicks and put 2 and 2 together.

 

[elmo]

It figures!

Last night was the first night I was not going to worry about temperature fluctuations because I'd figured out what was happening with chicks cuddling next to the thermometer.

So last night was the night that the chicks decided they were not going to sleep under the brooder lamp where the thermometer is placed. No, for the first time they decided to sleep in the opposite corner of the brooder.

I guess this means they're pretty much done with needing extra heat at night indoors. They're already spending most of the day outside in a pen on our screened in breezeway, where regular daytime temps have been in the 80's.