Heat lamp help!

[lazy gardener]

My understanding is that those dimmer switches still burn the same amount of electricity, just cut the amount of heat/light going through the bulb. Better IMO to use a bulb of less wattage, or perhaps a ceramic heat emitter from the reptile section at the pet store. You only need a very small foot print of space in your brooder for the chicks to warm up. That tiny space should be no more than 90 - 95* the first couple of days. After that, it should be only warm enough to keep the chicks content, and be turned off for increasingly longer periods of time until they have no supplemental heat at 3 weeks, if they are being brooded in the house. By 3 weeks of age, the chicks should have 2 s.f. of open brooder space per bird.

However, IMO, the gold standard is the MHP system which uses a heating pad over a wire frame. @Blooie has 2 articles and a thread dedicated to this concept. MHP is much safer, more natural, and is not a risk of overheating. Many chicks are killed each year from being overheated by heat lamps. If your brooder is not big enough so that the far end of the brooder is ROOM TEMPERATURE, you have too much heat in that brooder!!

 

[The Moonshiner]

Idk but it cuts the light so I just thought that would be like a lower wattage bulb and save money.
Same as to why I don't use smaller wattage bulbs. To me dimming a 250 watt would be the same as and its just easy to adjust then switching bulbs or moving lamp.
Small footprint doesn't work for me I brood a lot of chicks constantly. Small footprint means crowding and smooshing.
Ceramic too expensive when you run a dozen brooders.
MHP also too small for amount of chicks I brood per brooder. And if I was to use more then one pad per brooder it would be too expensive imo for the set up.
Not a huge fan of MHP. Just a new spin on old product.
I used a similar product way back in the day and also the plates and the old gqf brooders.
Nothing scales to my needs as the old bulbs.
My smallest brooders are 4' x 8' biggest two are 10' x 10'

 

[Blooie]

Couldn’t have said it better, LG.

Edited to add: Yep, new take on an old idea, and I don’t take credit for it since so many did it before I did. And it doesn’t work well for huge batches of chicks.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Couldn’t have said it better, LG.

Edited to add: Yep, new take on an old idea, and I don’t take credit for it since so many did it before I did. And it doesn’t work well for huge batches of chicks.

But you have promoted it like a one woman army.
Lots of newer chicken owners have benefited all because of you spreading the word.
Lots of props to you for that.

 

[lazy gardener]

Idk but it cuts the light so I just thought that would be like a lower wattage bulb and save money.
Same as to why I don't use smaller wattage bulbs. To me dimming a 250 watt would be the same as and its just easy to adjust then switching bulbs or moving lamp.
Small footprint doesn't work for me I brood a lot of chicks constantly. Small footprint means crowding and smooshing.
Ceramic too expensive when you run a dozen brooders.
MHP also too small for amount of chicks I brood per brooder. And if I was to use more then one pad per brooder it would be too expensive imo for the set up.
Not a huge fan of MHP. Just a new spin on old product.
I used a similar product way back in the day and also the plates and the old gqf brooders.
Nothing scales to my needs as the old bulbs.
My smallest brooders are 4' x 8' biggest two are 10' x 10'

Your set up certainly does work for large broods of chicks, but may not work for the newbie who is trying to brood 6 chicks in their living room with a 250W heat lamp. Unfortunately, feed stores sell those heat lamps without any consideration going into the fact that they may then be used in a home, which is not what they were intended for.

Unfortunately a lot of necessary details are left out when folks are describing their set up. I'm also guilty of that. When describing a brooder set up, it would be helpful if ALL OP, as well as responding folks would include such details as:

How many chicks? Starting with day old chicks? Location of brooder? Ambient temps both high and low? Size of brooder? Type of heat being provided? If a heat lamp, what is the wattage? If heat lamp, what is the temp under the lamp, and at the far end of the brooder?

 

[ChickChickHorray]

We are housing them in the house while they’re chicks, it’s a 250 watt infrared bulb, which is what the guy at the feed store told us was best. There’s going to be eight chicks starting at a day old. He also told us pine shavings worked best. Would he heating pad be ok under the pine shaving? Suggestions? Is this a pad specifically for chicks, and can someone tell me where I can order it? Thanks for all of your suggestions, as a newbie chicken keeper, I’m a little overwhelmed but thankful for your suggestions!

 

[kklowell]

You can do a search here for "mama heating pad" there's a LONG discussion about it. All of your questions will be answered, and you'll probably be a convert.

 

[Blooie]

But you have promoted it like a one woman army.
Lots of newer chicken owners have benefited all because of you spreading the word.
Lots of props to you for that.

Thank you! What a nice thing to read! I’m always pretty quick to note that it doesn’t work well in all situations, but I guess I do really push it kinda hard. It’s just that for the average backyard chicken keeper, those who are brooding once or twice a year with 10-20 chicks it just makes sense to offer an alternative. Whether anyone chooses to use it or sticks with lamps is totally their choice - they are there, I am not, and they know their needs better than I do!

@ChickChickHorray, it’s just a Sunbeam X-Press Heat human heating pad. I’m not at home, and don’t do links well from my device, but if you enter “Mama Heating Pad in the Brooder” in the Search tab above you can get right to it. It’s long, but all you really need to know about MHP is in the first post, and at the bottom of that post is a link to an alternative setup. Whatever you decide to do, good luck with your new chicks!

 

[ChickChickHorray]

You can do a search here for "mama heating pad" there's a LONG discussion about it. All of your questions will be answered, and you'll probably be a convert.

Thank you! I’ll look for that now.

 

[lazy gardener]

Read the articles written by @Blooie . You can find the details about how to make your MHP in those articles or in her thread. It must be a heating pad which does not have the auto shut off feature. Almost all of the newer pads shut off automatically after 2 hours. Sunbeam XPress makes a pad which has a switch to turn off that feature so it will stay on 24/7. There are other pads which do not have the 2 hour shut off feature. The pad is put over and secured to a wire frame which you make. The frame/pad is formed into a shallow cave which the chicks snuggle under, much the same as they would under a mother broody hen. This method is much safer, more natural, less stressful for the chicks, gives them natural day/night cycles, results in chicks who are better socially adapted, and not as likely to result in an overheated brooder.

IMO, heat lamp + rubbermaid tote = easy bake oven.

If you have not yet used your heat lamp, you can return it.