Poults, temperatures, and heat lamps.

[babelfish]

I'm trying my hand at raising a pair of poults this year. I've raised ducks before, and my family has raised chickens, but turkeys are new.

So, I'm curious about nighttime temperatures and poults. My two poults are about five weeks old right now, and I've just moved them from a brooder box into a proper pen. The pen is 14x14, and inside is a sheep hutch (from animals gone by) which measures about 4x6. The hutch has a heat lamp about two feet off the ground, with a 250W bulb, which should provide ample heat directly under the bulb.

I live in the northwest, which means our nighttime temperatures will rarely be above 60 degrees. Usually, they'll be between 55 and 60. Currently, it's just short of 11pm, and we're at 64 outside my house, and the danged poults decided to huddle together about as far away from the hutch as they possibly could. Mind you, their food and water are also in the hutch.

For tonight, I've gone and locked them into the hutch. But, in the future, should I worry about five-week old poults making it through the night at our normal nighttime temps, if they're too dumb to find their way to the heat lamp? And, if so, at what age can I stop worrying about this?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

At five weeks of age they should be pretty well completely feathered out. If they have free access to the warmer areas at night then let them choose where they want to sleep. The important thing is not to let them get soaked (as in don't force them to stay in the rain) and they have some place dry to sleep at night. Good time to start their roost training too if they haven't already.