heat lamps?

[Opa]

I use a heat emitter bulb. They don't produce any light. They are more expensive but they last about tens times longer. I have it plugged into a thermostat plug that turns it on at 35 degrees and back off when it reaches forty five. My coop is draft free so it's mainly to keep the water from freezing.

 

[ChandlersChickens]

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Hmmm good idea. I'll look for one of those. Maybe I can find something battery operated to use it in.

 

[Mrs MIA]

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Silkies do just fine.

I'm struggling with keeping the water from freezing, at the same time not racking up a huge electric bill. I have two coops... one is 8x8' and has one 250w red lamp on the waterer. No problem. The other is 12x20', but is split into 8 pens. We thought that a cup-waterer system would work, with heat supplied by heat-tape, but we goofed and added a "T" so the system is outside the pens and at each pen "T"-s off into the pens with a 3-4" length of pipe. The main line is staying fluid no problem, but the "T"s are freezing solid. I'm thinking we would have been better off drilling a hole through each pen INSIDE the pen, and attaching the cup right in line. We may have to re-do the whole thing. I've been using soda-pop bottle waterers as a backup, but even at the balmy 22°F in the coop, the bottles are freezing.

I can't afford to heat the whole coop to keep it above freezing all the time.

 

[Wynette]

My neighbor across the road has no electric near her coop; she fills a water pan each morning and breaks out the ice at night...refilling it in the a.m. It's a chore doing this every day, but it's a chore she happily does for her little feathered friends. She really has no other choice (that she knows of). A solar powered water heater would be the nuts!

 

[Mrs MIA]

Yeah, we tried the solar powered stuff this summer, but we never really got enough sun to make it work right (electric fence/too much rain). In the winter it's even worse. The days are so short, I doubt we'd get enough juice to run a nightlight.

 

[NancyDz]

We bought a lower wattage heat bulb at the pet store , it's used for reptiles. It keeps a warm spot for our parrot and we don't worry about fires as it's made to be left on constantly. They also have thermorocks and pads, I wonder if any of those would work under a water bowl?

 

[tknjk]

Someone mentioned the cost of running a heat lamp. If you ran a 100w bulb 24/7 for the whole month, here in TX it would only cot roughly $10.00 or so for the year, at my rate anyhow which is .14 KWH. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem too bad to me. Especially because you only need it for a few months out of the year. I would, and I'm certainly no expert make sure my coop was sealed good, and had a good layer of warm fluffy stuff for my chickens to sleep on. That would cut down on heating costs probably.

 

[Chicken of the Sea]

A 100 watt bulb is obviously using .1 kwh.
.1 kwh x .14 per kwh = .014 or roughly a penny and a half per hour. .014 x 24 hrs = roughly 33 cents per day. 33 cents x 30 days = ten dollars per month.

 

[ams3651]

im looking for a lower watt red heat bulb too. I want just enough to keep water from freezing and a little extra heat. I also think the 250 would be too much. I want them to get used to the cold and not have to rely on the heat.

 

[Heather J]

Last winter I just added warm water to my water pans every morning. I had to carry it out in milk jugs--two trips, one for the chickens, one for the water birds, but it was fine. Occasionally I would make a third trip because the first one was to melt the ice so i could dump it and start fresh if there was mud and guck in the bottom. Only during the coldest weather did I add more in the afternoon. By the time I got home from work, they were all in bed asleep during the coldest months anyway. This year I got a waterer with bottom heat for two of my pens, but the water birds will still get theirs in milk jugs once I have to turn off the water line I ran out there this spring.