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

[Blooie]

I'll have to get a picture in the morning. At the ends where the door is I am putting hardware cloth from the ground up. I'm cutting the HC to fit the curve the cattle panels make and I'm having a hard time getting a good fit between the HC and cattle panel. There is a gap usually at the edge of the ground.

Oh, I think I see. We didn't do hardware cloth up that high anywhere on the run, so I can see where the difficulty is coming from. We just used another piece of chicken wire for that part. We folded it around the corner, and tied it to the chicken wire on the long side of the panel and screwed it to wood around the door frame, using large washers. We also folded the excess at the top side down over the arched part and tied it to the existing chicken wire over the top. Then we did the hardware cloth as a skirt and apron at the bottom. It's harder to explain than to do, doggone it!

Oh, wait...imagine trying to fold aluminum foil to fit a round pizza pan or 8" cake pan - with the pan standing on end. Think how you'd fold the excess to fit around the curve and tuck the edges of it into the inside of the pan. THAT's what we did with the chicken wire, and then we attached it to the chicken wire that was already going over the arch.

 

[Blooie]

Um, or you could use plywood.

 

[maybaby45]

Um, or you could use plywood.

LOL!

I was trying to use all wire for ventilation but I can't get the skirt to sit right to the ground. I think I can get plywood to work.

 

[katbriar]

I used hardware cloth on the ends of my hoop coop. The sides and top I trimmed to shape, bent the edge over and fastened with hog rings (buy the pliers; it will make the job easier!). The bottom edge I fastened to a 2 x4 using screws and fender washers. Someone else said something called modified truss screws had a large enough head to work, but the screws and fender washers worked great. I also fastened a two foot apron around the frame to prevent digging predators.

One word of caution- make sure your structure is symmetrical if you're going to sandwich and cut both pieces of plywood like deb suggested. I used old panels and they were a little warped. Frame is strong, everything is great, but it's not perfectly even.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[Drewnkat]

Quote: Now that I have seen for myself how effective it is, and that it doesn't MELT the ends of my brooder boxes if it accidentally gets bumped even a fraction of an inch... I feel like people who use a heat lamp are the ones taking the bigger chance! And I say this as someone who has two of the stupid heat lamps going right now, because I have to keep my EEs separate from my pure RIRs, and I also have a smaller "special care nursery" box set up for a chick who was limping, and a couple who had a rough hatch. I put the heating pad in with the pure RIRs because those seemed to generate the most interest from buyers. Not that I don't care about my EE chickies, I just have to be practical right now.

If I sell all of these, maybe I'll use the proceeds to purchase a bigger better heating pad for next time. Because if these all sell, hubby will make sure there is a next time! He's been just itching to find a way to make my chicken obsession pay off with more than just a couple dozen eggs a week for the family to eat (and with 6 kids let me tell you we can go through over a dozen in one meal without hardly trying) .

 

[alibabba]

Now that I have seen for myself how effective it is, and that it doesn't MELT the ends of my brooder boxes if it accidentally gets bumped even a fraction of an inch... I feel like people who use a heat lamp are the ones taking the bigger chance! And I say this as someone who has two of the stupid heat lamps going right now, because I have to keep my EEs separate from my pure RIRs, and I also have a smaller "special care nursery" box set up for a chick who was limping, and a couple who had a rough hatch. I put the heating pad in with the pure RIRs because those seemed to generate the most interest from buyers. Not that I don't care about my EE chickies, I just have to be practical right now.

If I sell all of these, maybe I'll use the proceeds to purchase a bigger better heating pad for next time. Because if these all sell, hubby will make sure there is a next time! He's been just itching to find a way to make my chicken obsession pay off with more than just a couple dozen eggs a week for the family to eat (and with 6 kids let me tell you we can go through over a dozen in one meal without hardly trying) .

proceeds? I can only dream! These 23 chicks eat alot!

 

[alibabba]

Talking about pens... I'll put this here, I say use the idea if you like and if you come up with improvements, please share back.

This is 50 ft of materials.

creates 198 sq ft of space. And you (or you and another person) can move it easily. Mine is supposed to be electrified, jumping off my original pen... Its on the to do list.
PVC (which I hate, maybe bamboo next time!!!) conduit for support. you could use anything smlall around the welded wire about 9 inches high to keep chicks in. I had escapes...and subsequent roundups. I did have the pvc conduit crossing over the top in a little dome, but it looked a little weird sticking up. But if you have a square pen with around 50 ft of materials, you only get around 150 sq ft. The bigger the circle the more it works. Geometry and chickens.

 

[alibabba]

I'm so glad that you've tried this. It's amazingly simple, and yet it's so effective - and safe!! On other threads I keep reading posts from people who are stressing about heat lamps, controlling temperatures, and worrying about their chicks being ready to go outside, even when night time temps are in the 60s and 70s and the little darlings are close to point of lay already! Well, that's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

And that's where I was last year - riddled with guilt because I just couldn't tolerate the 22 chicks I had in the house for one more minute. I evicted them to the coop on April 1st when they were 5.5 weeks old, and I did the heat lamp thing, the wireless thermometer thing and getting up all night to go out and check on them thing. I ended up taking out the heat lamp on the third day because they weren't anywhere near it or using it during the night anyway! That night it snowed, and we got our last snowfall on June 6th. They were just fine, and that's when I realized that all of this fussing wasn't for them - it was for me. I thought that in order to be a "good chicken mama" I had to do things the traditional way, when all along the chicks couldn't have cared less. That's when I found Patrice Lopatin's video and read about Beekissed incubating eggs and raising chicks this way. This year - no noise and dust in the house, no heat lamp to keep raising and lowering, and absolutely no stress. All I had to do was feed and water them and watch them grow and learn to be chickens! And unlike last year, I have thoroughly enjoyed all three batches of chicks.

Oops, got to get off my soapbox - I guess by now I don't have to convince anyone on this thread that I'm not crazy for doing it this way, do I? To have so many people think, "There has to be a better way" then actually try it is what Patrice Lopatin, Beekissed, aart, and CrzyChcknLady81 worked so hard to break ground for. You guys have all made such a contribution to people who will be embracing the idea of raising chicks as naturally as possible, and to each other with your innovations and modifications - like shower curtains, shelving for a frame - so many ideas! Every time someone thanks me, I think, "You're welcome - but you are the one who took the chance on something totally different!"

I was afraid to let 2 6 week chicks go out in Sept/Oct last year. New to chickens and all I saw was "brooder, lamps, temperatures..."
And the endless sad threads about stuck bottoms from excess heat...

I thought geez baby chickens must be so hard. I lost sleep I swear. I thought chicks must be dang impossible to keep alive!

But niggling in the back of my mind was a common sense of really if a "momma chicken can do it...." Then I saw Momma chickens doing it better than anything in the snowy winter....

My chicks wanted to sit on top while still in the house and then nothing to do with it when I moved them to there own little coop. Not one poopy butt the whole time.

Haven't lost one outside and the runty one I was worried about, is still growing and doing every thing everyone else does. She will be a keeper, along with the Wyandotte with a wonky toe.

Getting them on grass, with the cocci bacteria is a good thing. I am going with the medicated feed to help develope the immunity and they need to have some exposure for that to work. So all is well, knock wood. No Cocci either.


ETA: So thankful I was able to find this thread when my chicks arrived to apply some ideas and make things work!

 

[maybaby45]

LOL!

I was trying to use all wire for ventilation but I can't get the skirt to sit right to the ground. I think I can get plywood to work.

It worked! Now I need the door and I have a coop! These girls can go outside!


Yesterday we took them out early and worked on the coop with them in it. They ran and foraged all morning. Took them in when a big thunderstorm came, into the brooder they went. They all climbed on top of MHP (who was off) and took a snooze. I don't think they had stopped for more than a few minutes all morning. Being a chick is hard work. LOL

I will say I'm really surprised at how fast they have feathered out. My RIR is more than 75% feathered at 15 days.

 

[COChix]

We finally saw the sun in Colorado for more than 5 minutes yesterday, it has been raining everyday. Anyway, our 4 week olds got some outside time in the enclosed run and the flock finally got to see their babies. Just few pics, Blooie you said you don't get sick of seeing chick pics, right?!