My understanding, just from what I read here, is sand requires daily cleaning, kitty litter box style. More power to people who don’t mind doing that, but not for me. I think the horse pellets are a good idea and after my first clean out sometime next year, I’ll probably do just horse pelts since hemp is so darn expensive!
Horse bedding pellets are 100% pine.
Hello BigBird!
I just received mine, they are even more fun and adorable than I imagined. What did you all decide on, besides the two polish?
Oh I originally wanted fluffy sweet orphingtons too, but decided against them for the same reason. Just too darn hot in Florida! But those RIRs and barred would give you lots of eggs, big ones tooHello FlufferChick:
I cant tell you yet its a BIG secret.
Actually it's not, we haven't picked them up yet as we were working on building the coop this week while my son was in town and helped me do a lot of stuff I am not able to do anymore, plus the Florida heat is murderous right now with the heat index up to 110.
I am leaning toward road island red and bard rock as i understand they can tolerate the heat so much better other wise I would have gotten Orpington's.
The hoop coop is erected and all I need to finish up is wire tying the hardware cloth to the cattle fencing in several places through out the middle of the frame work. Then just add the tarp.
Oh ya need to finish up the nesting box, but for all intense and purposes were just about there.
That is definitely too hot for them. They need an area to cool down and keeping them at those temperatures will kill them. How hot is the garage? Ideally you want to have around 70-75 on the cool side and 95 on the warm side of the brooder for the first week and then every week after lower the hot side temp by 5° until 4 weeks old when they don’t need heat anymore.Clucky Monday FlufferChick.
So I got a question that I know you can help me with I hope.
This is probably going to sound ridiculous I am finding myself hesitant to picking up my baby chicks and bringing them home.
My question is: Being that you are also in Florida and dealing with this heat, where are you keeping your brooder and how are your babies doing with this insane heat. I have two places to keep my brooder My shop or the garage. I know the C.O.E (Chief Of Everything) of our house would prefer the shop over the garage but the shop is in the high 90's pushing 100F at times I can open the windows but it wont help much. Being a first time chicken dad I don't want to stress them out or worse.
I know first few day old chicks need Hi heat in the brooder but the selection at the store are now older and I am not sure how to proceed. Do I still need the heat lamp and let them self regulate or is the current temps in the shop/garage enough.
I would like to get my girls this week as they will be fully feathered by October and the coop will be done ready for them to move in since October stays fairly warm here in the south.
Any thoughts- suggestions- ideas- hand holding would greatly be appreciated
The C.O.E. says "Hand holding in this instance is acceptable"
To other readers your input would also be welcome. Thank you in advance.
Stay clucky everyone.
BB.
You should try getting them out within the first couple weeks of September. Keeping them in a brooder past then is really not needed and can become a huge pain. I moved mine out when it was still getting to just above freezing during the night at 5 weeks old.
