doughouse
Songster
Hi everyone,
Before I dive in with my question, I just wanted to say a quick word of appreciation to this community. This is my first time brooding chicks (kind of*) and I've had a lot of questions so far, but I haven't posted here yet because any question I had, no matter how odd or "out there," was already answered here! A quick search of the archives always surfaced the answer I needed. So thanks!
So I do have a question about brooding day-olds in the same brooder with two-week-old chicks. We ordered four baby chicks from Meyer Hatchery (great experience with them, btw) which arrived this Tuesday (May 12). Three of them are thriving so far, but one poor girl was in bad shape and we weren't able to revive her, despite our best efforts. She died a few hours after arrival (As a side note, I was mentally prepared for this possibility when we ordered them, but DANG it was still so sad!). We decided to replace her, but of course you can't ship a single chick in the mail, so we ordered a replacement plus two more for the shipping minimum. They'll be hatching on May 26th, so our current little brood will be two weeks old when they arrive.
I've read up on the threads on this forum about brooding different aged chicks together in the same brooder, and I think we'll put them together with some hardware cloth separating them for the first few days until the little ones are big enough to not be trampled by their older sisters. We'll of course keep a close eye on them when they integrate to make sure the bigger girls aren't picking on the littles, and that everyone is eating and drinking together okay.
My question, though, is about heating them. Right now I'm using a Brinsea Ecoglow for the three we have now. The first two days I also had a heat lamp on during the day, since I read in one of the Ecoglow reviews that they don't come out from under it very often the first few days, and I wanted to make sure they were warm while eating and hydrating after their journey through the mail. I'll be able to rearrange the brooder to make sure the bigs and the littles each have access to food and water while they're separated, but I'm not sure what to do about heating them. I definitely want the littles to have access to the EcoGlow brooder so I could just have the heat lamp out for the bigs, but I'm also not crazy about taking the Ecoglow away from the bigs, who by that point will probably see it as a safe and comfortable thing to hide under. So maybe the little just get the heat lamp? I don't know. Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated.
*I have had chickens before: my family adopted the two chicks from my younger brother's elementary school class incubation project back when I was in high school, so this technically isn't my first experience brooding chicks or raising chickens, although that was 25 long years ago and so I'm basically a newbie at this.
Before I dive in with my question, I just wanted to say a quick word of appreciation to this community. This is my first time brooding chicks (kind of*) and I've had a lot of questions so far, but I haven't posted here yet because any question I had, no matter how odd or "out there," was already answered here! A quick search of the archives always surfaced the answer I needed. So thanks!
So I do have a question about brooding day-olds in the same brooder with two-week-old chicks. We ordered four baby chicks from Meyer Hatchery (great experience with them, btw) which arrived this Tuesday (May 12). Three of them are thriving so far, but one poor girl was in bad shape and we weren't able to revive her, despite our best efforts. She died a few hours after arrival (As a side note, I was mentally prepared for this possibility when we ordered them, but DANG it was still so sad!). We decided to replace her, but of course you can't ship a single chick in the mail, so we ordered a replacement plus two more for the shipping minimum. They'll be hatching on May 26th, so our current little brood will be two weeks old when they arrive.
I've read up on the threads on this forum about brooding different aged chicks together in the same brooder, and I think we'll put them together with some hardware cloth separating them for the first few days until the little ones are big enough to not be trampled by their older sisters. We'll of course keep a close eye on them when they integrate to make sure the bigger girls aren't picking on the littles, and that everyone is eating and drinking together okay.
My question, though, is about heating them. Right now I'm using a Brinsea Ecoglow for the three we have now. The first two days I also had a heat lamp on during the day, since I read in one of the Ecoglow reviews that they don't come out from under it very often the first few days, and I wanted to make sure they were warm while eating and hydrating after their journey through the mail. I'll be able to rearrange the brooder to make sure the bigs and the littles each have access to food and water while they're separated, but I'm not sure what to do about heating them. I definitely want the littles to have access to the EcoGlow brooder so I could just have the heat lamp out for the bigs, but I'm also not crazy about taking the Ecoglow away from the bigs, who by that point will probably see it as a safe and comfortable thing to hide under. So maybe the little just get the heat lamp? I don't know. Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated.
*I have had chickens before: my family adopted the two chicks from my younger brother's elementary school class incubation project back when I was in high school, so this technically isn't my first experience brooding chicks or raising chickens, although that was 25 long years ago and so I'm basically a newbie at this.
