HELP!brooder heatlamp issue

[countrymomma008]

Hi everyone,I am having issue keeping my brooder the right temperature,its either to cold or to hot,Ithey are in a horse watertrough and I have to heat lamps over them.should I go down to using just one lamp?also does the whole brooder have to be the same temp?please help!

 

[Sonya9]

You want one side of the brooder to be warmer than the other so the chicks can go towards or away from the heat as needed (and not cook to death). If they stay huddled under the heat lamp they may be too cold, if they all get on the other side (away from the heat lamp) it may be to warm.

You could use a heating pad (see thread below on that). When using a heat lamp I attach it to a dimmer cord ($10 at the hardware store) so I can adjust the power to the lamp and raise/lower the heat.

 

[countrymomma008]

Ok so should I shut the other hear lamp off?

 

[tsmith91]

Try just using the one heat light on one end like sonya9 said you want one end cool and one end warm they so they can go to which ever one they need just watch them and see what they do

 

[countrymomma008]

Ok I turned off the one heat lamp so ill watch them today see how they do.

 

[rides2far]

My husband made a box frame to raise the heat lamps. One lamp wasn't enough, two were too hot. You might think about how to raise both of them. Good luck

 

[curious chickee]

I have different watt bulbs, 100 watt & 75 watt, anything higher is too hot, 100 watt only for first week keeps under the lamp 90 during day and 80 at night, my chicks are outside. I switch to the 75 watt at second week. Then turn it off during day week 3 & no heat week 4. It is warm where I live so I don't need much additional heat.

 

[azygous]

People mostly have the wrong idea about heating brooders. They think it's like baking a cake or cooking a roast, that the brooder has to be of a certain even temperature.

Try to think of chicks being on a camping trip. It's colder than they want, so they need a campfire to warm up. When standing by the fire gets too hot and uncomfortable for them, they move away from it to cool down, returning when they need to warm up again.

The lamp should be hung at a level to produce a temperature of between 85 and 95 degrees on the floor of the brooder under the lamp. All the rest of the brooder should be much cooler. This is just a guideline starting temperature for chicks during the first week, not a hard and fast rule. Raise the lamp next week so the temp is five degrees cooler, then keep lowering the temp until they are weaned off heat by age four or five weeks.

 

[curious chickee]

People mostly have the wrong idea about heating brooders. They think it's like baking a cake or cooking a roast, that the brooder has to be of a certain even temperature.

Try to think of chicks being on a camping trip. It's colder than they want, so they need a campfire to warm up. When standing by the fire gets too hot and uncomfortable for them, they move away from it to cool down, returning when they need to warm up again.

The lamp should be hung at a level to produce a temperature of between 85 and 95 degrees on the floor of the brooder under the lamp. All the rest of the brooder should be much cooler. This is just a guideline starting temperature for chicks during the first week, not a hard and fast rule. Raise the lamp next week so the temp is five degrees cooler, then keep lowering the temp until they are weaned off heat by age four or five weeks.

Great analogy

 

[azygous]

Thanks. Another point I should have made is that brooders that are too small will produce a pretty uniform temperature and the babies will be stuck in an oven-like environment with no way to move out of the hot zone. They will literally "cook". People wonder why their chicks are dying. This is one of the most common causes.

Plastic "totes" are convenient but most of the time they're much too small to allow for cool zones. Also the plastic holds in the heat, creating even more of an oven effect.

I'd like to see the brooder concept done away with entirely and replaced by placing the baby chicks in a cordoned off area of the coop with a heating pad cave as their heat source. This is discussed in great detail on this forum under the title "Mama heating pad for the brooder". It's a far safer and much more natural alternative to the brooder and heat lamp approach. It's impossible to "cook" your chicks to death with this method.