Heat lamp alternatives needed.

[JustAnotherWeirdo]

anywhere between 30-70 chicks at a time but I am downscaling this year so let’s say 40 chicks between 1-6 weeks old (my pekin babies can take up to 8 to be feathered enough to stay outside) but ideally of course I’d like to have 2-3 brooders set up instead of 1 this year. Currently the weather is at a low of 10°C at night and between 22-30°C during the day and later on in the season it quite consistently reaches a low of 20°C. This season I’d prefer to have multiple brooders so I’m not keeping newly hatched chicks and 6-8 week olds in the same brooder which is not ideal or the safest but it worked fine mostly due to the different heat requirements of the ages, tinier chicks stayed closer to the lamp and larger chicks further away or completely not under it if the weather was warm enough.

How many chicks and what temperatures are you dealing with? "Quite a lot" does not help with scale.

The more chicks you have the better and easier they keep warm of course, however I’d like something that could work with both 10 or 40 newly hatched chicks and with older chicks too that are nearly ready to go stay outside but just need another week of feather growth still

Your suggestion is a completely new one I’ve never heard of and it might work, however it doesn’t seem quite as adjustable as a heat lamp with varying temperatures underneath it or a brooder plate you’ve set up to be much lower on the one end than the other, but perhaps it could be if you did with it exactly what I just said about the brooder plate.

 

[JustAnotherWeirdo]

I see the rest of my message didn’t send so I’m retyping it now.

I quite like the idea of the seed mats and pinning them up kind of diagonally so there’s different heat intensities for the chicks to choose which I think that could work pretty well!! However this is my first time hearing of a seed mats but I remember seeing aluminium heating pads made for reptiles which should work as well and pretty similarly right?

 

[Tennessee Great Granny]

Just had my brooder caught on fire *once again* and fill the house with smoke because my lovely cats knocked it over this time. Definitely my fault for not being able to secure it today while setting it up but still awful and I’ve always had paranoia about a heat lamp starting a fire or shattering so it’s definitely time to find a good alternative. All chicks and cats are thankfully fine by the way The chicks are still just a day old so I just placed them back in the incubator and then I’ll have to figure something else out tomorrow morning.


Ok so I’m going to start the rest of this off by saying that I am not from America meaning there is no tractor supply and there is no Amazon so suggestions from there will not work. I’ve looked into brooder plates before but everything available here is just so insanely overpriced so that’s not too much of an option either


Now for some context on my setup and a bit of what I’m looking for: I run a tiny hatchery during spring-summer (most chicks get sold at under a week old) and breed show chickens as well so I can end up having quite a lot of chicks in the brooder at once and of different sizes too which isn’t ideal. We also used to keep the brooder inside but everything was just so dusty then and its not ideal at all, because of this I’ve come up with the idea of cutting off the top of some flow bins (keeping the walls quite high to help block out wind) and placing them on the porch (3/4 of it’s walls are closed with only one open wall) (with some cat proof covers so the neighborhood cats can’t get in) so something that could work with that would be nice. If still using heat lamps the plan would be to hang them from the roof of it and have something on the brooder hold it in place and secure it so that the wind couldn’t blow it from side to side. Any critique and advice is appreciated!

I use producers pride brooder plates for my babies. They are very durable and have had some for years and they still work great. I put the ends at differing heights so bigger chicks can get under it too and the small ones have the heat source close enough to provide enough warmth. What's really nice about this brooder plate is that I have used it with wet ducklings and they did fine [no shocks either]. My goslings grew so fast they outgrew it very fast but they got warm by laying on top of the plate. This brooder plate was made to fasted by a slider hole over screws in a wall. and also by a second stand to hold it upright in a nursery coop. It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. I've been in three fires in my lifetime ( as a child the first two). I am so paranoid of fires that there is no way I can even force myself to use a heat lamp. I love this method and Producers pride has set a reasonable price for these. You can used them over and over and over again year after year and they are worth every cent.

 

[AnneGirlGG]

I use producers pride brooder plates for my babies. They are very durable and have had some for years and they still work great. I put the ends at differing heights so bigger chicks can get under it too and the small ones have the heat source close enough to provide enough warmth. What's really nice about this brooder plate is that I have used it with wet ducklings and they did fine [no shocks either]. My goslings grew so fast they outgrew it very fast but they got warm by laying on top of the plate. This brooder plate was made to fasted by a slider hole over screws in a wall. and also by a second stand to hold it upright in a nursery coop. It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. I've been in three fires in my lifetime ( as a child the first two). I am so paranoid of fires that there is no way I can even force myself to use a heat lamp. I love this method and Producers pride has set a reasonable price for these. You can used them over and over and over again year after year and they are worth every cent.

Same brand I use. I've got 2 and they're great!

 

[Not-so Slick Chicken]

This thread seems to be a little old, so this may not be helpful, but

If there's a way to keep your cats away from your brooders so they can't knock the lamps, that could allow you to still use the heat lamps while you try out alternatives.

Is 10c the coldest your area gets? If so, that's not terribly cold (unless there's chill from wind and wet)
Month old chicks can huddle and handle that just fine, without heat
Perhaps even a few 2-weeks-old chicks.
That being said, I'd not leave chicks without heat in case they were too cold, of course!