Mama Heating Pad in the Brooder (Picture Heavy) - UPDATE

[16 paws]

About 4 years ago, I came home with 3 gold laced wyandottes. I didn't have a coop or anything built, and they were little chicks. I put together a brooder for them using an old wicked blanket chest I had planned to throw in the trash. I didn't want to use a heat lamp for the risk or fire, nor did I want a light blazing at all hours in my bedroom (yes, I kept them in my bedroom). I remembered what my father used to do for his tropical plants in the winter months and figured it would do the same thing for chicks! So, I got out the trusty old heating pad and draped it over a small shoe box in the brooder. It was a big hit and those chicks grew up to be beautiful, productive ladies. They were very spoiled birds that would jump into my lap to have their ears scratched.

Eighteen months after those first chicks and a big coop and run building project, a nasty old opossum found a flaw in the aviary netting and tarp I used for a roof attached to the run and coop. It destroyed my flock leaving one lone surviving silver laced wyandotte. It was one of the lowest points in my life. Not just because my pet chickens were left in pieces strewn across my back yard, but also I had lost my dog to cancer the month before and my mother-in-law was under hospice care for a long illness (we moved her and her husband in when they both became ill). It was very hard to see what had happened to my pet chickens on top of everything else. I re-homed the last chicken with a friend and decided that someday, I might try again when life was more calm.

I'm really glad to have found your thread, @Blooie . It's very inspirational to see all the different ways folks have found to use a heating pad in a brooder. I really like your setup for your chicks at your home. It's so nice to see all the modifications of the cave or huddle boxes that everyone has made for their chickies. This time around, I'm using 2 heating pads for my 4 chicks and they are loving it! I've been reading it for some time now. When the weather is more clear and I have some natural light in my craft room, I will share a photo.

@16 paws I think your experience is significant and helpful to someone that has a chick they want to give some extra special TLC. From your photo, it looks like the MHP has been a success! I really can't say that I could have done any better if something like that would happen to one of my pets. I also can understand why you feel hurt. I think your chick looks beautiful and you are doing a good job doing the best you can for her to have a shot at life. I'm rooting for the two of you!!!

Thanks so much.I think she is beautiful too. She is doing very well so far. I am pleased with her progress.
I am so sorry you had to go thru so much heartache and all at one time. You are a very brave person. Enjoy your new little chickidies and happy crafting. I have worked at Michaels for over 10 years and love crafty, creative people.
Marie

 

[Victoria-nola]

Quote:

Can be hard to keep in mind when reading forums is that many of the posts on them are the problems.....
....people come to forums when they need help with a problem....
.....so it can seem like there are always/typically those problems in whatever arena you're reading about.

Good stories to problem stories ratios are often about 1 to 20.

Yes, and important to keep in mind. In my case I also had an offer of a 1.5yo Great Pyrenees pup, but she's repeatedly attacked poultry where she lives so I had to decide against her. But we know that an organic, free-range egg farm up the road from us uses a pair of the GP mixes that are locally available and they are totally happy with them. So again the message for me is, don't focus on the negative, focus on the positive and make good choices.

Thanks for the reinforcement

 

[bruceha2000]

Quote:

Can be hard to keep in mind when reading forums is that many of the posts on them are the problems.....
....people come to forums when they need help with a problem....
.....so it can seem like there are always/typically those problems in whatever arena you're reading about.

Good stories to problem stories ratios are often about 1 to 20.

Yes, and important to keep in mind. In my case I also had an offer of a 1.5yo Great Pyrenees pup, but she's repeatedly attacked poultry where she lives so I had to decide against her. But we know that an organic, free-range egg farm up the road from us uses a pair of the GP mixes that are locally available and they are totally happy with them. So again the message for me is, don't focus on the negative, focus on the positive and make good choices.

Thanks for the reinforcement

If you could get a pup from the egg farm, it would likely have been raised around chickens and have an excellent start in that regard.

 

[wamtazlady]

I said I'd be back to this thread after I'd experimented using the MHP with goslings. The results are varied.

Let me explain. I set my MHP up keeping the newly hatched goslings my neighbor had in mind. It looked great. Four ducklings and 3 goslings were ordered. Then my goslings arrived. Metzers sent me an extra Super African and neighbor asked me to take in one of her goslings that was smaller than her others which made for 5 geese. The Super Africans were easily triple, maybe quadruple the size of the neighbor's gosling. So out came the heat lamp as they wouldn't fit. I redid everything and set it up again. It worked for a few days. Those Super African goslings grow fast. They were looking over the top of the 7 foot long 2 feet deep stock tank I have them in at 2 1/2 weeks old. They take up easily 1/3 of the tank when they are laying down. They are big but they are still babies and need some heat as the weather has been chilly and damp here.

So does the MHP work with goslings. I'd say it depends. It depends on the number of goslings, the breed of goslings, and whether you also have smaller birds like ducklings in with them. If I had a small breed of geese I'd still be using the MHP. My neighbor who has raised other breeds of geese for years has never seen anything like the Super Africans. We refer to them as "The Monsters" now due to their huge size. Neighbors come over every few days just to gawked at the monsters and shake their heads in amazement.

So my experiment was kind of a failure. I am going to give it a try with the next batch of birds I get, but will be more careful as to what type I get. Wish it would have worked out better as I think it's a wonderful way to raise the babies.

 

[aart]

Quote:

Can be hard to keep in mind when reading forums is that many of the posts on them are the problems.....
....people come to forums when they need help with a problem....
.....so it can seem like there are always/typically those problems in whatever arena you're reading about.

Good stories to problem stories ratios are often about 1 to 20.

Yes, and important to keep in mind. In my case I also had an offer of a 1.5yo Great Pyrenees pup, but she's repeatedly attacked poultry where she lives so I had to decide against her. But we know that an organic, free-range egg farm up the road from us uses a pair of the GP mixes that are locally available and they are totally happy with them. So again the message for me is, don't focus on the negative, focus on the positive and make good choices.

Thanks for the reinforcement
Then again, reading all the problem stories for months before getting birds helped me avoid many a pitfall on my journey......
.....and the goods and the bads convinced me that goats and bees were beyond my capabilities.

I said I'd be back to this thread after I'd experimented using the MHP with goslings. The results are varied.

Let me explain. I set my MHP up keeping the newly hatched goslings my neighbor had in mind. It looked great. Four ducklings and 3 goslings were ordered. Then my goslings arrived. Metzers sent me an extra Super African and neighbor asked me to take in one of her goslings that was smaller than her others which made for 5 geese. The Super Africans were easily triple, maybe quadruple the size of the neighbor's gosling. So out came the heat lamp as they wouldn't fit. I redid everything and set it up again. It worked for a few days. Those Super African goslings grow fast. They were looking over the top of the 7 foot long 2 feet deep stock tank I have them in at 2 1/2 weeks old. They take up easily 1/3 of the tank when they are laying down. They are big but they are still babies and need some heat as the weather has been chilly and damp here.

So does the MHP work with goslings. I'd say it depends. It depends on the number of goslings, the breed of goslings, and whether you also have smaller birds like ducklings in with them. If I had a small breed of geese I'd still be using the MHP. My neighbor who has raised other breeds of geese for years has never seen anything like the Super Africans. We refer to them as "The Monsters" now due to their huge size. Neighbors come over every few days just to gawked at the monsters and shake their heads in amazement.

So my experiment was kind of a failure. I am going to give it a try with the next batch of birds I get, but will be more careful as to what type I get. Wish it would have worked out better as I think it's a wonderful way to raise the babies.

Not a failure, just learned a application limitation.......if you had had 2 pads you could have facilitated the monsters too.
Vivid pic of giant gosling peering over edge of trough cracked me up!

 

[Liddy]

My EE pullets are now 3 weeks old. I removed the HP and left them under MamaFenceAndTowel.

Until the cold front came through last night, they were roosting on the perch I gave them. Tonight when I closed up the coop shed, they were all snuggled in the cave.





Since I'm new to this, can someone please let me know if this is on track for feathering out at 3 weeks? They look fine to me but then, I've been wrong before.

 

[Beekissed]

You know I just wanted to post on this thread to try and help someone that may have a special needs chicken use the mama heat pad brooder. I am sorry that some people may be upset for some reason. I would say that some posts are rather hurtful rather than helpful.
Marie

You can look at it that way or you can view it from another perspective. Most of the people on this thread are here to help others, not hurt them. Friends flatter and tell you what you really want to hear, but the really good friends care enough about you and the situation to tell the truth.

The truth of the matter is that many of us have had or seen sickly, deformed or just genetically problematic chicks that the flock has very correctly tried to eliminate for some reason....sometimes we can see the reason and sometimes we cannot. From a human aspect it may look very cruel but I've found that the flock is almost always right and they sense or see something we cannot.

It may seem heroic or compassionate to try and save a chick with problems and sometimes it actually works....but mostly it ends sadly and all the while the poor bird lives at a constant disadvantage within the flock. Folks with experience in such things will often try to throw up a red flag of warning to those who may not have been there or done that so they can spare the person~but mostly the animal~from distress. While these truths may seem hurtful at the time, in the end you may look back and see how helpful some were trying to be. No one here likes to hurt people but sometimes the truth must be spoken and the truth sometimes is a hurtful thing.

I've been in a position to tell friends the hurtful truth on this forum....some even on this very thread. At the time I could tell it might have been somewhat hurtful for them to hear and there was a lot of resistance to the helpful advice, but in the end and in retrospect, I'm sure they might now see the wisdom of that advice.

 

[azygous]

Look who's all integrated already!
I opened the portals a couple days ago, just after Thelma, Louise, Lucy, and Ethyl turned two weeks. I just let them into the adjoining pen for starters, without the adults, so they could learn how the portals work. Then yesterday, I opened all of them. Most of the adults are ho-hum regarding the chicks, and the one or two who insist on pulling rank aren't enough to dampen the chicks' spirits. They just fly up onto that perch you see behind me, and all's good.

 

[jrjoplin]

I've got a new batch of chicks in the brooder. Using my same setup as I didn't have a chance to do the reworks. The brooder is out in my shed and even with opening it up as much as possible it's about 70-80 degrees. The chicks run in and out of the MHP but don't linger in there like the chicks in March did. Still, they are mostly quiet and content. I do have one that has quite a set of lungs on her. I can hear her from about 30 yards away but each time I check on her she quiets down and is fine. I did rearrange the layout of the brooder so there is more open space. I'll try to get some pictures of the new batch. Since they arent up at the house I have to make a note to take the camera as I still have issues getting phone pictures to upload.

I ordered all pullets with this order to compensate for the bad odds with the straight run order. We had a Cooper's hawk that reduced the flock by three so the bigs don't get as much free range time as they had been. I've walked out twice now and caught it sitting on the fence eyeing the run. The side of me that knows he's just doing what birds of prey do and the side that seeks vengeance for the lost chickens are arguing (in OK I can legally kill him as he's become a nuciance to my livestock but that is always my last resort). From my original batch of 26 i have 14 left. The largest drop was from the death and then early processing of the meat birds that were sent with my order. MMM sent 8 Pioneers that started dying off at 7 weeks. From asking around it looks like i was overfeeding them so i processed 4 of them early but have kept the smallest to see how she does (the fact that she's one of my few hens tipped the balance in her favor). Of the 14 from that batch i have 5 hens. Of the 9 roosters only 1 gets to remain intact. I've got it narrowed down to 3; the SLW, the White Wyandote, and the Dark Cornish. I have SLW and DC hens so the WW probably won't be the winner but he's an impressive looking bird and about as friendly as you could hope for.

I appear to be rambling so I'll let you all get back to your MHPs.

 

[Jensownzoo]

I said I'd be back to this thread after I'd experimented using the MHP with goslings.  The results are varied. 

Let me explain.  I set my MHP up keeping the newly hatched goslings my neighbor had in mind.  It looked great. Four ducklings and 3 goslings were ordered.  Then my goslings arrived.  Metzers sent me an extra Super African and neighbor asked me to take in one of her goslings that was smaller than her others which made for 5 geese.  The Super Africans were easily triple, maybe quadruple the size of the neighbor's gosling.  So out came the heat lamp as they wouldn't fit.  I redid everything and set it up again.  It worked for a few days.  Those Super African goslings grow fast.  They were looking over the top of the 7 foot long 2 feet deep stock tank I have them in at 2 1/2 weeks old.  They take up easily 1/3 of the tank when they are laying down.  They are big but they are still babies and need some heat as the weather has been chilly and damp here. 

So does the MHP work with goslings.  I'd say it depends.  It depends on the number of goslings, the breed of goslings, and whether you also have smaller birds like ducklings in with them.  If I had a small breed of geese I'd still be using the MHP.  My neighbor who has raised other breeds of geese for years has never seen anything like the Super Africans.  We refer to them as "The Monsters" now due to their huge size.  Neighbors come over every few days just to gawked at the monsters and shake their heads in amazement. 

So my experiment was kind of a failure.  I am going to give it a try with the next batch of birds I get, but will be more careful as to what type I get.  Wish it would have worked out better as I think it's a wonderful way to raise the babies. 

I've had 3 Toulouse goslings and 5 magpie ducklings in a brooder together for the past week using an MHP. My solution was to attach the heating pad to a board with bungies, then suspend the whole thing frm above. Since the goslings and ducklings are different sizes, I put the MHP at an incline so the goslings could fit at the taller side while the ducklngs could snuggle under the shorter side. It has been working well. I am really looking forward to moving these guys to an outdoor pen though...so very, very messy!