Regular bulb or heat lamp bulb? $electric bill cost?

[Chicken Rustler]

Well this doesn't really deal with the difference or cost but what I am doing to allow me to decrease the temp without having to mess with moving the light. I bought a dimmer switch. Wired in a duplex box with 2 receptecals. This way I can use the heat lamp and as the chicks get older I just adjust the dimmer down.

 

[Akane]

A 100w bulb can get my indoor brooder over 100F. I tried to measure a 100w over my smaller brooder with a digital thermometer and came back to find the digital blank and it wouldn't do anything for about 2days before it suddenly came back on. A 250w bulb... haven't tried it but someone on another thread where we were debating it said they melted a thermometer. I do have a 250w in the basement but it's suspended over an already 3' high and 5' long brooder as the only heat source in a basement that is 60-65F on a warm day.

 

[vermontgal]

When I got chicks last year, I dutifully got a 250 watt bulb b/c that was what everything said. A day or two BEFORE the chicks were to arrive, I tried my set up and found that it was way too hot with the 250 watt bulb inside my mudroom. I am a heat mizer, so trust me that the mud room was not that warm (60s?).

WAY too hot. I returned the 250 watt bulb (cost $8), and purchased a box of two 100 watt bulbs (cost $1 for 2). I started off with 100 and then as others have said, tapered down to 75, 60, and then 40, based on the thermometer. It can be 5 deg colder each week older they get.

They peep loudly if they are cold, and not so loudly (happily) if they are warm enough. Distress peeps are pretty obvious once you have had chicks for about 15 minutes.