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

[ChickNanny13]

I've read through hundreds of the replies on this thread, but haven't seen my question come up. Granted, I haven't read all EIGHT THOUSAND of them, but I'm gonna ask anyway! LOL! I'm just wondering...is there any reason why i can't use hardware cloth to form the frame (as opposed to using it for a patch) instead of chicken wire? I'm only asking because I have extra hardware cloth I could use, but I have no chicken wire. I don't see any point in buying a whole roll of chicken wire just for a small piece if the hardware cloth will work. Would it get too hot, or would it be fine?

Donna

I've used extra hardware cloth (1/4 x 1/4 squares) for the "skeleton", worked for me & chicks! I've also used welded wire (1/2x1, 1x2) cause I had some laying around, worked too. My start up was rough, over thinking the simplicity of "design", have used it 3x and LOVE IT!

 

[debid]

I'm just about convinced. I read part of this thread but became frustrated by the abundance of unrelated topics. I really just wanted multiple ideas so I could try this without a huge investment in materials.

Anyway, I have a heavy duty galvanized tomato cage that popped a few welds last summer. I think it could be turned into a framework. I brood in an unheated outbuilding so the Ecoglo was never an option but I guess this would be enough but only 50-55W. I'm getting 5 chicks so I expect the regular size, elcheapo pad should be enough. We do have mini power outages semi-regularly so I definitely appreciate that someone pointed out the benefit of a slide control.

 

[ChickNanny13]

Even though we don't have any chicks yet, March 28th +/- for delivery, we are well on our way in getting ready. We, too, have read much of this thread and what we are gong to try is chicken wire because we have some BUT what I used was 1/16" thick, 1/2" wide and 36" long aluminium from Home Depot, about $2.50 a piece. I am using 2 pieces with a 1/8" stiffner rod(was used in prototype but wife wanted the "cave" not as deep so rod is probably not needed. Anyway, I just bent the aluminium to form an arch the height we wanted, 6" in front and 4" in the back. I used plastic wire ties to attach the chicken wire over the hoops. With the heating pad on top and towels on top of that, this should work fine. I folded Gorilla(or duct) tape over both sides of the cut wire, sandwiching the sharp wires from being a danger. Testing indicates that the "roof" of the cave will be 90+ degrees.

We recently read the article by Blooie about brooding outdoors in the coop. It looks like we are going to try this and in honor of her great contributions to this site, we are going to name one of our girls, Blooie!! TBC, BB Second pic has our dog's tail showing!

Heating pad needs to be under the frame not top, it has to touch the chicks back, Home Depot sells packs of small bungee cords that I use after I read some others mentioning it. Thinking 4" - 6" may be too high, mine start of with 3" - 3 1/2". Great idea using the rod to support the chicken wire, you can increase the height when needed but from my experience with MHP, by 2 wks they're on top of it more than under.

Enjoy your brood!

 

[aart]

Quote: Heating pad doesn't have to be under the wire rack, pad on top of wire rack can work just fine.

Watch that tape tho..... if it starts to come unstuck, can stick to a chick.

 

[Nathan J]

This is my first post on BYC, I've reading for a couple weeks but didn't have anything to contribute until now, as I'm just in the learning phase to get some chicks this Spring.

This concept for brooding chicks is indeed fantastic. It sure seems like a no-brainer to use this more natural way vs. a heat lamp, for the many reasons people have pointed out in this thread.

I'm only on page 31 of the whole thread (a long way to go!), but a couple of things have come up that I have some ideas about, and I don't think they have been addressed yet; I searched the thread but I could be wrong about that.

The first is the fear of starting a fire. That fear has been addressed by pointing out that the heating pad doesn't get hot enough to start a fire, and I agree with that. But I think the real fear is in a possible short circuit and consequent sparking/arcing that could start a fire, especially in a bunch of dry straw. There are reports you can see in the Amazon reviews of some heating pads doing just this kind of thing (though I'm sure they're rare). So as small as the chances are, it is a possibility.

I think the biggest risk is at the controller, but it might also happen in the wires in the pad. A good way to mitigate this risk is to get some fireproof (or at least resistant) material and wrap the pad and controller (probably separately) to contain any sparking/arcing that might occur. That should extinguish any occurrence quite quickly and keep things safe (though of course the heat would be stopped and that's a whole other issue, but at least the chicks don't die in a conflagration!). But I'm not an electrician nor an electrical fire expert so I'm open to others' views on this. There are fireproof document bags that could serve this purpose for relatively low cost. I think I'll be doing this. Seems like good insurance to me.

The other issue is a power outage. A way to mitigate this risk is to use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) as a backup; as is often used with computers, etc. Depending on the size/capability of the UPS it could power a 50W heating pad for quite a while, and at minimum keep the pad from turning off during a brief power blip. I've tested that with my heating pad plugged into a UPS and a power interruption does not cause the pad to turn off (though I can't promise that would be the case with any heating pad, of course).

I am NOT an electrical expert and thus can't answer questions about how long a given size UPS will power a heating pad. All I can tell you is that it depends on the power your heating pad is drawing (any where from 50W to maybe 180W from what I've seen), and the capability of the UPS. It seems to be a very hard question to answer as I've searched the internet for a straight forward answer to this question. This link to a UPS on Amazon has some time estimates for several different products. https://www.amazon.com/APC-Back-UPS...pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1486822785&sr=1-4&keywords=ups The estimates are for a 10 watt load, so a 50W pad could be powered for between about 39 min to 70 min for between $50 to $100 dollars. I'm sure you could spend a lot more for one that could power it for several hours. That's the extent of my knowledge on the topic! There might even be a better way to accomplish this other than with a UPS. I'd love to hear any other ideas, or reasons that this wouldn't be a good solution.

The best way to think of this is in terms of insurance. So the value to you of keeping your chicks alive will determine how much you want to spend on a UPS to insure against a power outage. Anywhere from zero (i.e. "I'll take my chances and replace the chicks if the worst happens."), to several hundred dollars to be sure it will stay on through an extended outage. Only you can make that decision.

Hope that helps! I'll probably get a low end model to protect against short outages/interruptions.

 

[logansgranny]

Hi...I have been reading your posts about the broody house..I love it! I have 11 chicks coming in two weeks, and so excited. My question is...what is your average nighttime temperature? It will be mid March in Central CA, and the nighttime should be in the 40's. The area I want to set up for the chicks is nice and roomy...in the summer three sides get air, for winter I have a canvas tarp on two sides. I am wondering if it might be too drafty. I have a feeling it won't...but don't want to loose a baby due to my ignorance. I will set the little broody house up so it is protected at least on three sides... LOVE your ideas!

 

[ChickNanny13]

Heating pad doesn't have to be under the wire rack, pad on top of wire rack can work just fine.

Watch that tape tho..... if it starts to come unstuck, can stick to a chick.

Thanks for clarifying, I was under the impression the MHP had to be under/touching chicks back. You're right about that tape, I learned that the hard way. I made the covering for the MHP a bit larger, then wrap it over the edges with the bungee holding it.

 

[cholland]

I made mine using some 2x4 field fence scrap. Then just set the pad on top and covered with an old towel. The wire is stiff enough to bend and hold shape great. The chicks do press up some when they first go under each time and get in between the wire a bit, but it doesn't seem to bother them much. At night they cuddle down near the back a bit where it's lower and they look pretty cozy.
I have 16 chicks under one of the large 12 x 15 sunbeam pads. It should still cover them once they double in size no problem. I'm brooding in an old RV. It only gets into the low 30s here at night. They should do fine in there. Will move them into the new coop in a couple weeks, with the MHP of course..until they feather out and spring really gets here.

This works way better than a heat lamp. Much safer. And the chicks love it.

 

[Nathan J]

This works way better than a heat lamp. Much safer. And the chicks love it.

Yep, it's great, isn't it? When I started looking into brooding chicks (and keeping chickens) I was struck by how terribly unnatural the constant light was for them, and how disruptive to their health it must be. (We are still learning just how important circadian rhythm and all that is for us human health.) I can't help but think this must lead to long term problems and even mental health (yes, even for our bird-brained friends). I have nothing to base this on but I also would bet that is may have something to do with the bad reputation that chickens have for being mean and ornery. They are basically tortured for the first several weeks of their lives, what do you expect? It's a very 20th century method and we know how some of that has been shown to be less than great in the fullness of time.

Now that said I would bow to others with much more experience with chickens than I (which isn't a high hurdle!) on this. Though I also think that those who've used the heat lamp method for a long time are likely to rationalize the harms away to help assuage their conscience. It's the human way. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they are bad people, it's what they knew and thought was best.

I would be interested in hearing from those people with lots of experience with this method and with broody hens raising chicks and how that compares to heat lamp-raised chickens in terms of temperament and health. Of course anecdotes isn't proper scientific evidence, it's hard sometimes to properly attribute causation, and there are always outliers, but it would still be interesting all the same. There may already be some discussions on this at BYC; I'll have to search.

 

[jessnurse05]

I'm sorry if this question is already answered, it was a bit daunting to read the whole thread to find the answer. I have 4 chicks that are 3 weeks old. I have had them in a dog kennel in the house with a mama heating pad and I have it set on low right now. I haven't seen them under it in the last week, they will sleep on top or one day they were snuggled together on the other side of the dog kennel.

It's starting to get a little bit nicer here, but still down into the high 20s at night. I have let them go outside in another dog kennel that is reinforced with hardware cloth for their safety and I have mama heating pad in there with them. I am planning on covering 3 sides and the top of the kennel with a tarp to protect them from the wind. I was also considering using greenhouse plastic over it to hold more warmth when the sun is out.

Do you think this will be enough protection for them overnight or should I bring them back in? I don't have a solid structure to keep them in yet, I'm still working on building the coop.