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

[COChix]

Hey, great to see you!  Nights and days are getting cooler here!  Did you get any of that snow this weekend?  Carter Mountain here had a brand new dusting, and I guess they got some in the Parks.  Can our turn be far behind?

All of our Littles are laying now, and I suspect two of the 8 Tinys are as well.  We have one EE, we call her Bumblebee because she looked just like one when she was a chick, has stayed pretty small and her first eggs looked like robin's eggs.  They are getting bigger now - now on her good days the eggs are the size of pullet eggs.  She just can't decide if she's a Bantam or a Standard size chicken.  But she's reliable as the tides when it comes to laying.  Yours can't be far behind!

No snow yet.....not quite ready for that yet. The cooler nights and days have been a nice change. From our hatch we have 8 young cockerel's all living in rooster row, as I call it. They are in the enclosed run and I am getting ready to feed them some bread crumbs soaked in milk and such to fatten them up, we will process all 8 within the next two weeks. We have seven pullets from our hatch and our mixed breeds are rather large. We have been having some fly boy's by a hawk that has decided our birds might make a tasty treat.

 

[PowellAnimals]

Here are a few of my new babies sitting on top of their heating pad. They love it!

 

[Blooie]

Oh, cuteness overload! Great job! How are you liking this system so far?

 

[henless]

An update on my heating pad. My teenies aren't using it all that much. Our temps over the last couple of days have hit 100 in the barn, supposed to be around 94. We're supposed to have a cool front come through today with temps in the upper 80's. Hopefully that will happen. Also, we had a power glitch yesterday. I went out to the barn and the heating pad had come back on with the power. So all is good in that department! Sure takes a load off your mind to know that the pad will come back on. It's not so bad in the summer, but we have more power glitches in the winter and that is when you'll really need the pad.

 

[Blooie]

I really like the notion that it stays on and goes back on when power is lost. That would have been nice the night the power went out in a blinding snowstorm! Ah, who am I kidding - I'd have still gone out there to check anyway.

When their surroundings are warm, they don't rely much on the pad. With a broody they'd only dash under her only if they got chilled or spooked. They spend most of their time out exploring. Replicating that is what we are trying to do with the pad, and it sounds like it's working just as it should for you. Imagine those poor little stinkers in heat like that with a heat lamp that further heats their entire environment and they have no way to get away to a colder spot. Lots of folks don't think about the ambient temperatures - they put that lamp on because "the book" says they are supposed to adhere to those listed temperatures.

 

[PowellAnimals]

Oh, cuteness overload! Great job! How are you liking this system so far?

I do like it a lot! I am concerned that I am not socializing them as much as I would if they were in the house but we shall see how they grow up. I do not have my dog cage wrapped so they come out of the cage and run back in at the sight of danger. A few have gone too far and started peeping like crazy until I came and retrieved them but they do run up to me when I go to get them so it has been fairly easy.

One giant problem however is the fact that the heat pad does not turn back on after a power outage. We just experienced one so I had to run out to the coop in a thunderstorm to turn it back on and it is a little bit of a hike. I will be waking up a few times tonight to make sure the power hasn't gone out again.

 

[Blooie]

Yeah, that is an issue. I had to turn mine back on in a power outage during a blizzard with 60 mph winds and a temp of 14 degrees when the chicks were only a week old. Not fun! We don't know how long the power was off - it was the power being restored that woke Ken up and he woke me up. But it had to be for a few hours because we went to bed around 11 and he woke up at 4. Fortunately the towel we had on top and all of the straw we had packed in behind, under and around the cave insulated well and held in enough residual heat that the chicks were just fine. Did you see further up on the thread where henless found a heating pad that turns itself back on after a power outage?

 

[henless]

One giant problem however is the fact that the heat pad does not turn back on after a power outage. We just experienced one so I had to run out to the coop in a thunderstorm to turn it back on and it is a little bit of a hike. I will be waking up a few times tonight to make sure the power hasn't gone out again.

That was my only concern with this product. It's no big deal as long as I'm home, but if the power goes out when I'm at work, I have no way of knowing until I get home at the end of the day. During the colder months, thought could be a problem.

Another user on this thread (I forgot their name, hopefully they will check in and speak up) mentioned that they had gotten one from Sunbeam that had no auto shut off and would come back on if the power was interrupted. I called Sunbeam and they found it for me.

The pad is here. If you read the reviews, some of them are reviews of different pads. So you have to look close. I've been using this since last Friday and we've already had one power glitch. It came right back on like it was supposed to.

I actually plan on getting another one (actually 2 since they have a buy one, get one free offer going on) to keep on hand for back up.

 

[PowellAnimals]

That was my only concern with this product. It's no big deal as long as I'm home, but if the power goes out when I'm at work, I have no way of knowing until I get home at the end of the day. During the colder months, thought could be a problem.

Another user on this thread (I forgot their name, hopefully they will check in and speak up) mentioned that they had gotten one from Sunbeam that had no auto shut off and would come back on if the power was interrupted. I called Sunbeam and they found it for me.

The pad is here. If you read the reviews, some of them are reviews of different pads. So you have to look close. I've been using this since last Friday and we've already had one power glitch. It came right back on like it was supposed to.

I actually plan on getting another one (actually 2 since they have a buy one, get one free offer going on) to keep on hand for back up.

One of the reviews (first one) says it shuts off automatically. That is not what you experienced? It looks like I may be picking this up.

 

[henless]

One of the reviews (first one) says it shuts off automatically. That is not what you experienced? It looks like I may be picking this up.

If you look under that review, it states:
Quote:
The King size heating pad is not the same as the one I posted. You would think it is, but it has a different product number.

I plan on writing a chicken review once I've used this for a few weeks.