Heating Help!

[halimak1]

My heat lamp just busted! I have been scouring the house for a 100 watt but I see that we're "too up to date," having only LED and fluorescent bulbs!! I even thought of my heating pad but it has an automatic safety off after about 20 minutes! I cant get to the store tonight and the low is 66 tonight. Is there something old school I could do? There's 20 of them could they huddle it out tonight?!

 

[redsoxs]

How old are they? Past 3 weeks and they might make it through. Here's an old time trick that we used to do when I was a kid. For our unheated and frigid bedrooms we'd heat bricks in the oven of the woodburning stove. We'd wrap them a towel and they made for a toasty bed warmer. Might try that. At a minimum you should shrink their brooder size or move them to a smaller enclosure to conserve heat. Good luck!

 

[halimak1]

Oh sorry, they are 2 weeks :/ I thought about maybe boiling water and putting it in a jug? I could try an old baking stone in the oven too! Thanks so much!

 

[Choco Maran]

Make sure you buy two lamps so you will have a spare if t happens again. At two weeks they should be fine for a night. Are they inside the house in a heated room or outside in a garage this will make a difference. If outside they will need some kind of heat. Inside the house they should be okay for the night.

 

[azygous]

A word of caution here. Years ago, I had week old baby chicks when the power went out. No problem, I thought, I'd just fill some milk jugs with hot water and place them around the brooder.

The hot water filled bottles put out a lot more heat than I thought they would. It was a very good thing I was as doting on the chicks as I was because I saw that the chicks were beginning to pant and otherwise show signs of heat stress.

In my single-minded focus to provide heat for my chicks through a power outage, I almost killed them with too much heat. I quickly removed all but one of the water bottles, freeing up three-fourths of the brooder to be cool.

Since then, I've learned that only a single heat source is necessary. The chicks will warm themselves when chilled and then move away from it. It's always better to err on the side of having a brooder on the cool side than to over-do it with too much heat.

Do you have an old fashioned rubber hot water bottle? I've used one of those in a power outage when I was brooding chicks under a heating pad. The hot water stays a lot warmer for much longer and the chicks can snuggle against it if you wrap it in a fuzzy towel.

Oh, I thought of one more thing. If you boil water for the purpose of providing heat in a brooder, you are risking burning the chicks. That water is 200F, and you only want water at around 90F, so make sure the hot water is not so hot that you will burn your hand if you placed it against the bottle.

 

[halimak1]

I had found an unused (and won't be used) baking stone dish. Heated it to 175 the lowest my oven would go. I doubt it even got that high as I could still quickly touch it. I wrapped it in a towel and it was toasty and the only heat source. It was perfect for the night. They were all chirping away in the morning!