Pre Pads in Brooder Question

[VintageLilFarm]

My chicks are due next Saturday, so I am finishing up preparations. I have read from multiple sources about using puppy pads to line the bottom, so have been considering that. However, there are also pads made to put under human patients in bed. There are "chucks" and other brands. I even found some lined with carbon, which seems like an especially good idea for brooders inside the house. I'm wondering if anyone knows if there is any reason I should not use those? Thanks for any input.

 

[azygous]

If you wish to spend the money on these pads, they should be perfectly safe as long as the cover is sturdy enough to withstand tiny, curious beaks. The activated charcoal is a neutral substance, but you wouldn't want baby chicks filling their crops with it.

If you intend to use them to try to control the odors from poop, I don't think it's going to help all that much. Regular puppy pads would work as well, and so would plain paper towels or some old hand towels.

I've found that sand in the brooder works better than just about anything, and it's a breeze to keep clean. It also doubles as dirt bathing medium and grit. A real three-fer.

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

I would skip the pads, put them in the coop on shavings and skip the mess in the house as well. I used a premier heat plate with temps dropping in the 20's and they feathered out fast and weans themselves off heat in 4 weeks. Don't use a heat lamp in the coop they are fire hazards.

Good luck

Gary

 

[VintageLilFarm]

If you wish to spend the money on these pads, they should be perfectly safe as long as the cover is sturdy enough to withstand tiny, curious beaks. The activated charcoal is a neutral substance, but you wouldn't want baby chicks filling their crops with it.

If you intend to use them to try to control the odors from poop, I don't think it's going to help all that much. Regular puppy pads would work as well, and so would plain paper towels or some old hand towels.

I've found that sand in the brooder works better than just about anything, and it's a breeze to keep clean. It also doubles as dirt bathing medium and grit. A real three-fer.

I am using a large cardboard box inside a baby Pack n Play for the first week or two, until the weather gets a bit warmer and I will put them in a large pond liner with sand out in my greenhouse. So I want to line the bottom of the box with a moisture barrier. Otherwise, I'd likely use only sand.The adult pads would cover the entire bottom, or close. I have also been considering real, natural sand on top of the pads. Thanks for the input about the pads. I just obviously don't want to use anything that may cause any issues for my little fuzz butts.

 

[azygous]

You have a very good plan!

 

[VintageLilFarm]

I would skip the pads, put them in the coop on shavings and skip the mess in the house as well. I used a premier heat plate with temps dropping in the 20's and they feathered out fast and weans themselves off heat in 4 weeks. Don't use a heat lamp in the coop they are fire hazards.

Good luck

Gary

No, I won't be using a heat lamp in the coop or house. We are actually using a heating pad, after researching it quite a bit. I wish we could get warmer plates, but too spendy for us right now. I've heard they are the bomb!

 

[VintageLilFarm]

You have a very good plan!

Thank you, the reassurance is appreciated! I have hatched only eggs from my own coop before. This time we see using purchased eggs, so I'm a bit more nervous!

 

[sevenfatcows]

Sand will generate more dust in your house than you might want. I have used sand from my own yard, cleaner "blow sand" hauled from a wash nearby, and builder's sand from Home Depot-all were dusty, but blow sand is cleaner in appearance.
To avoid at least some of the dust, (chick are dusty all on their own) for the first few days, we always use old towels. That way, the chicks can get a real good grip on the floor of the brooder and have nice, straight legs. I just shake the dirty towels out and wash them afterward. I've kept chicks on towels for as long as a week changing about once a day or so.
You can also put chicks outside from day one, if you have a secure pen shielded from wind and a safe heat source. A chick plate works, as the previous poster mentioned, and is safe when litter is involved. I use them (have one small, one large) but more often need to use lights as well as I have several pens in service at one time. A light is safe over bare ground, and dirt is just fine for new chicks as long as it has not been over-used. We will put down a layer of cheap, bagged topsoil because it is kind of soft and fluffy-"chicks dig it!"
I once used some "chucks" that had come home from a hospital stay, and they worked okay but I would not pay for something like that. I have a brooder in the house right now being used by chicks who are outside during the day. I have it lined with up-cycled brown packing paper from a Walmart shipment with a few paper towels on top of a cheap heating pad that does not turn itself off. I throw in a few clumps of grass with dirt/roots attached so they have something to play with, plus it improves the cleanliness and smell. These chicks are 12 days old, in another week or so they will "graduate" from the heating pad to a seed germination mat that draws only 17 watts-that will do for inside and outdoors by then. There's about a million ways to brood chicks and almost anything will work out if it is not a slick surface. Good luck!

 

[VintageLilFarm]

Sand will generate more dust in your house than you might want. I have used sand from my own yard, cleaner "blow sand" hauled from a wash nearby, and builder's sand from Home Depot-all were dusty, but blow sand is cleaner in appearance.
To avoid at least some of the dust, (chick are dusty all on their own) for the first few days, we always use old towels. That way, the chicks can get a real good grip on the floor of the brooder and have nice, straight legs. I just shake the dirty towels out and wash them afterward. I've kept chicks on towels for as long as a week changing about once a day or so.
You can also put chicks outside from day one, if you have a secure pen shielded from wind and a safe heat source. A chick plate works, as the previous poster mentioned, and is safe when litter is involved. I use them (have one small, one large) but more often need to use lights as well as I have several pens in service at one time. A light is safe over bare ground, and dirt is just fine for new chicks as long as it has not been over-used. We will put down a layer of cheap, bagged topsoil because it is kind of soft and fluffy-"chicks dig it!"
I once used some "chucks" that had come home from a hospital stay, and they worked okay but I would not pay for something like that. I have a brooder in the house right now being used by chicks who are outside during the day. I have it lined with up-cycled brown packing paper from a Walmart shipment with a few paper towels on top of a cheap heating pad that does not turn itself off. I throw in a few clumps of grass with dirt/roots attached so they have something to play with, plus it improves the cleanliness and smell. These chicks are 12 days old, in another week or so they will "graduate" from the heating pad to a seed germination mat that draws only 17 watts-that will do for inside and outdoors by then. There's about a million ways to brood chicks and almost anything will work out if it is not a slick surface. Good luck!

Love all this info.

About your heating pad, do you just have it laying on the floor of the brooder? The things I've read say to make a "fort" of wire with the heating pad on top of it, so the chicks can go underneath.

As for the sand, I'm only planning to be using beach sand that has been rinsed. I read that actually helps with the dust. But now I'm wondering if I should use towels. I've had chicks in the house multiple times and the dust is the worst! I have used pine shavings and pellets. Towels do seem like a good way to cut dust, but I've worried that chicks could get toes caught or get under the towels and suffocate. Fun idea about the bagged soil. Hmmm.

 

[azygous]

A heating pad just laid flat won't do much to heat the chicks. Think how chicks warm under a broody hen. They press their backs against her naked, sweaty, warm skin and absorb her body heat by direct contact. That's the principle of the heating pad system.

I cut a scrap of steel field fencing the size of the pad, bend it into a shallow "U" shape and bungie the pad to the concave side. Then I wrap the whole thing in another piece of flannel material and secure it so chicks can't squeeze themselves between the pad and metal, which I did have one chick do and get itself hopelessly stuck. Luckily I rescued it before anything happened to it.

I've found the heating pad system is as close to natural as you can get just this side of an actual broody hen. I adjust the frame upward each week as the chicks grow to accommodate their doubling in size. They naturally wean themselves off the heat and no longer need it by age five weeks, and they then move into the coop with no heat. This is possible because brooding outdoors exposes chicks to very cool temperatures from the start hardening them against cold very early.

Sand, while being a wonderful medium for substrate for brooders, coops and runs, is going to be dusty, no matter how clean it is to start with. This is why brooding in coop or run is the more desirable than in your home.