I'm happy that you enjoyed this thread. So many great people have contributed their ideas and modifications and that interaction is what makes it work. You didn't say how old your chicks are. If they are old enough and fully feathered then with temps in the 40s and 50s (are those nighttime temps or daytime, by the way?) they might well not need any heat source if you wean them off the heat lamp over the next few days. Heat lamps scare the pee-waddin' out of me anyway.
It looks like yours is up pretty high so I'm assuming that your chicks are older and don't need the intense heat that most people have on them the first couple of weeks.
It doesn't look like the control on your heating pad allows you to bypass that pesky "auto-shut" off feature most new heating pads have. Without that you'll have to go out every couple of hours and start it back up, which is a pain in the hiney! Best thing to do with it, if you don't have the instructions that came with it handy, is to turn it on to high, then let it sit. Check it in 2-3 hours and see if it's shut itself off. If it has, that pad probably won't work for what you want to do. That one feature is what makes this whole system feasible - the ability to turn it on and keep it on full time. I don't worry about what the temperature is under the pad. The chicks are loving it and perfectly comfortable, so I'm happy. Ideally, the experts all tell you, is to have the heat lamp set so it's 95 degrees in the brooder. But that heats the entire brooder area to within a degree or two. Using a heating pad with the digital controls allows you choose between 6 and all the way down to 1, but I don't know why high, medium, and low wouldn't work. Might just have to watch the chicks' behavior a little closer.
