Out of the brooder?

[dulcimer lady]

What age do you prefer to move your chicks from brooder to coop? I won't be integrating with any other chickens, so my only concern is temperatures. We're currently 70s-80s during the day and 50s at night.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Like everything else to do with chickens, it depends. Are they fully feathered? Have they been acclimated at all? Is the coop reasonably protected against drafts?

I keep my chicks in a brooder built into the main coop. They go there as soon as they come out of the incubator. A couple of summers ago during our heat wave with daytime temps over 110, I turned daytime heat off at 2 days and nighttime heat off at 5 days. I watched the chicks and they told me they did not need the heat. And they didn’t. They did fine.

This past February/March I kept the heat on them until they were 6 weeks old. It was still getting below freezing regularly at night.

My brooder is fairly large and I only heat one area of it, letting the rest cool off as it will. Some mornings his past winter there was ice in the far corners so I’m serious when I say it cools off. The heated area was kept toasty and the food and water was in a fairly warm area. It took them longer than normal, but they did play all over that brooder, including the cool area. Not when it was that cold mind you, but when it was plenty cool.

What all that means is that mine were acclimated to cooler temperatures. I venture to say yours are not. I have turned the heat off at five weeks with the nighttime lows in the mid 40’s. I have had chicks less than 6 weeks old go through a night with the lows in the mid 20’s. They were well acclimated, had good draft protection, and there were about 20 of them so they could huddle to keep each other warm.

I’m guessing yours are in the house where they never see below 70 degrees. If your coop has good draft protection, in those temperatures I’d feel comfortable putting them in it after they were 6 weeks old even without being acclimated, especially if you have 10 or more. If they were acclimated, I’d say now if they were five weeks old.