Gonna be one of those days. Went to bed feeling fairly productive. Set up outside brooder for my 19 mixed 5 wk olds, cleaned indoor brooder and set up for my week olds, set up incubator and put the shipped eggs in, cleaned big coop and changed out bedding/dusted nest boxes, and other randomness that I'm forgetting about.
Woke up this morning and the incubator didn't come back up to temp. Hasn't been above 95. I'm using a different thermometer but not sure if I trust it. The STC thermostat is set to 100. Actually I mixed things up quite a bit this go around so we will see how it goes. If temp is still down this afternoon I will tinker with it
Walked outside and the closer I got to the brooder pen the uglier it got. Fresh dirt on both ends. Rough guess is something got about half of them. Seemed like it was secure but dosent look like 1/2" hardware cloth is going to work. Didn't tear it loose or get through it but somehow managed to get at least some of the birds out. 3 dead in pen mangled and 2 injured but still alive and eating and drinking.
Plan forward is to move the brooder pen into my shed and hope that goes better.
Ehhh. Getting really tired of this part of it.
Oh my!

Lotsa folks end up using a shed. Works great for brooding