Light requirements for day old chicks?

[Imjustmoe]

I'm trying to get everything together to try and raise 50 chicks.
We have a 4x4x2 brooder box, and a 16x24 heat plate already.

What we don't have is lighting figured out. We don't want to use heat lamps. We're thinking about a full spectrum led set up but there's a ton of choices. We would love to get input on the best options to provide adequate lighting.
Thank you

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

They will quickly out grow your brooder box, hopefully you have a bigger area in mind.

Any type of light is okay. Light coming through a window works well too.

Welcome to BYC.

 

[ChickNanny13]

2x @oldhenlikesdogs
Where is your brooder located?
When are you expecting the 50 chicks?
That many chicks will out grow your 4x4x2 alot faster than you think. You may want to get couple of appliance boxes as a backup and hopefully your coop is almost done.

 

[Leecie]

At what age do you integrate baby chicks into your flock?

 

[Imjustmoe]

They will be in one of the out buildings that has power to start, and that is completely draft free however the building is not very bright inside even durring the day so we need supplemental light.
How long do you think they will be able to stay in a 4x4x2 box?
If a 4x4x2 box isn't big enugh, how big if a box should I use? The plywood hasn't been cut yet and a sheet or 2 more won't kill me to go buy it.


The chicks won't be ordered till we have everything in place.

We will be using a 10x12 converted barn stall as a coop for most of this flock, we will be selling off most of them. The ones we intend to keep will be integrated and go in to our main coop which will hold 30 birds as our current chickens free range 20 acres so the coop is for roosting.

The ones we keep will hopefully be integrated be 4 and 6 months