momtobogey
Chirping
My name is Pamela and I've finally made the leap to try my hand at have chickens! My daughter has 8 and I've always enjoyed their funny noises and relaxing behavior...plus the eggs! I just have 3 and they are now 3.5 weeks old. I had them in a trough, in our shed, but the temperature here in N. California reached 104 earlier this week, so I needed to take them out of the shed. They obviously didn't need the heat lamp, except at night when temps got to about 55. I purchased a pre-made coop which includes a small run (starter coop). My husband & I fenced in an area behind our shed and we put the coop inside. We don't really have many predators here in town, but trying to be safe, we reinforced the run with hardware cloth and chicken wire, even overhead. I haven't let them out of the pre-made coop/run to go into the larger run yet. Night temperatures are about 60 degrees, plus with the 3 of them locked in the coop I feel it's warm enough??? They've been fine for the last 3 nights. It was cooler this morning so I rigged up their heat lamp over the run part of the coop, but now it's back to 77 degrees here so I turned it off. I keep reading not to put chicks out in the coop until 6 weeks old. If the threat of predators is very low (they'd have to break into the run, break into the coop/run, then break into the coop itself to get to the chicks), is it OK that they're outside before 6 weeks old?
If your chicks are acting content and it doesn't get below 60 degrees at night, they should be fine. Keeping a close eye on how they are acting and if they show any signs of stress or being too cold, move them inside or bring out the heat lamp. Do take caution of using a heat lamp in the coop, as it can easily start fires, though.
Happy to have you here.
