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

[perchie.girl]

In my case natural bedding would be sand... Not a lot of leaves or even soil to be had... in the desert. But there is a lot of blow sand.

I use what is available... easy to manage.


deb

 

[perchie.girl]

Gee, can you imagine anyone (Blooie) getting chicks (Blooie) without having all the stuff needed (Blooie) and before even deciding where (Blooie) or how to build a coop? (BLOOIE)

you Blooied your self....

 

[Beekissed]

Gee, can you imagine anyone (Blooie) getting chicks (Blooie) without having all the stuff needed (Blooie) and before even deciding where (Blooie) or how to build a coop? (BLOOIE)

You had a coop for yours, didn't you? Or is my memory faulty again?

 

[debid]

Not-so-coincidentally, the farm stores with their "start up kits" meant for set up in a human habitat make it very easy to think they can just get that and chicks and the rest will come later so no need to consider it now. Blooie?

 

[Beekissed]

I think I first caught onto the unpreparedness of the new chicken keeping culture when I first signed onto BYC some time back. I started noticing threads about "What breed of chicken is this chick?"....a LOT of them. So, I finally asked the question: "Don't you know what breed you ordered or bought?" I was floored to find that a hoard of people out there just buy a mix of cute chicks from a general bin of chicks, not knowing what breed they bought or they buy the Brown Egg Layer Mix or some such from the hatchery and don't know the individual breed chicks they bought.

That seemed very strange to me but I soon caught onto the way it is out there now....chickens are the new fad pet and people aren't getting them and keeping them for food any longer, but as pets who lay an egg. Until I joined BYC I never knew that existed, people keeping chickens as pets. I've more or less accepted it now but I don't think I'll ever fully get used to it.

 

[HennyB]

Deleted post. Found my answer a few replies back.

 

[azygous]

Bee, part of the problem is that many folks buy chicks from corporate feed stores that arbitrarily select chicks of various popular breeds from a hatchery and then sell under the label "manager's choice". When a customer inquires as to what breeds are in the stock tank, the clerk replies, "Darned if I know". The best they can do is to hang a color poster of different chick breeds and point to it, and then the customer searches for resemblances to the chicks in the stock tank. Seven years ago, when I was still fairly new to keeping chickens, I bought some chipmunk striped chicks thinking I was getting Easter Eggers and they turned out to be Speckled Sussex.

Corporate business models and poorly or untrained staff are the problem, not chicken keepers. Since then, I try to do business with privately owned feed stores even though it means driving longer distances in order to get the breeds I want.

 

[azygous]

Not sure I understand this reply as an answer to the question. Should there be 2 heating pads; one for the top and one for the bottom or just one and should it be above wire or below?

Just want to clarify since I'm going to be making one shortly also.

TIA!

No, you do not need a heating pad on the bottom as well as one on top. The principle is that the chicks are making contact with the heating pad with their backs as they do under a broody hen. Those chicks that are well on their way to feathering out don't need as much contact with heat so they prefer to hang out on top, thereby getting minimal contact with the heat source.

 

[debid]

Azygous, I suspect that TSC cuts costs by accepting hatchery choice. They get whatever there is extra of that week and this is why they never know what they'll have ahead of time... And why they sometimes are mislabeled! I went in for something else and stopped to look at the bins. I saw GLW labeled as Ameraucanas. I pointed out the mistake and was told that they label them with what the hatchery says and that's what the box said they were. It made no difference that they were obviously incorrect, the sign wasn't subject to correction.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

I'm wondering why more folks don't just natural bedding for chicks? Things like dried grasses, leaves, yard rakings, etc. It's free, it's what they've be living on if their mama was hatching them and brooding them on the land and it doesn't hold any dangers for chicks. I figure folks in the desert climes may have trouble coming up with such things or maybe they too have dried grasses of some kind they can access?

I never did get the whole controversy in bedding materials for chicks...it's as easy as looking to see what they would be raised on if their mama was doing it and if they had access to the big ol' outdoors...then going out there and getting some of it. If it's too wet, dry it out prior to the chick delivery, but unless you've got a pristinely manicured lawn or land out there, there's bound to be dead plant matter to access for a brooder. It's sort of along the lines of giving them a clump of sod in their brooder...it gives them access to the environmental molds and pathogens in their future environment, right when they need the exposure.

That is what I would use (I use it in the coops, after all) but this time of year there isn't a whole lot of it available. I'm even going to have to break down and get a bale of hay to put in the run.