what are the affects on chicks of eating all the time due to heat lamps?

[froggyphore]

i hadn't really thought about it before but someone brought it up in a reply to one of posts so now i'm wondering. in nature the chicks have about 10 hours of rest with no access to food or water, while with a heat lamp they are eating and drinking constantly. does this affect their physiology at all? do they grow faster? is there a limit to how much nutrients they can absorb in a day, and it's essentially just a waste of feed? are there possible detrimental affects? thanks

 

[igorsMistress]

i hadn't really thought about it before but someone brought it up in a reply to one of posts so now i'm wondering. in nature the chicks have about 10 hours of rest with no access to food or water, while with a heat lamp they are eating and drinking constantly. does this affect their physiology at all? do they grow faster? is there a limit to how much nutrients they can absorb in a day, and it's essentially just a waste of feed? are there possible detrimental affects? thanks

In my experience, It didn’t seem to make any difference in my chicks under a lamp vs the heat plate as far as growth for size. It did seem to slow feathering out when I used a lamp though.

 

[Blooie]

Oh, my!! Let me count the ways!!

My obvious observation is pasty butt - or lack thereof. We rarely see pasty butt with broody hen raised chicks. From the moment they are out of the egg, they tuck under her when the sun goes down and sleep all night through. I have ZERO scientific evidence to back up my theory, but it seems to me that to me that our working with their natural inclinations is the next best thing to her way. And because I raise chicks in a way that most closely duplicate hers, I have only had 3 chicks with pasty butt in the last 7 yearsl Those three were in the same batch and came here with it. A couple of cleanups and they were good as new. It wasn’t a recurring battle. With my first ever batch of 22 chicks, indoor-raised with a heat lamp, I felt like cleaning hineys was my full time job.

It’s a given that what we see in chicks points to every system being immature. Every system. That includes digestion. They hatch pre-programmed to eat during the day and sleep at night. Artificial lights don't provide for that. So they eat 24/7, overloading a digestive system that just isn’t programmed to handle that. Under a broody hen, they fill their crops one last time before sunset and that gives them all night long to slowly empty those tiny crops and digestive tracts. That slow, natural digestive process just has to make more sense than systems that are overloaded.

Now some might say that they only eat when they’re hungry. Not exactly true. They eat when they’re hungry, of course, but they also eat because in a typical brightly lit brooder box there’s really nothing else to do - no exploring, no real space, no place to hide from real or imagined threats. There’s just them, a feeder, and a waterer. They eat because they see others at the feeder, and we all know that chickens are opportunists….they simply eat what they find whenever they find it, and if one chicken finds a bonanza they all have to muscle their way in to get their share. In a lamp-heated brooder, there’s always somebody at the feed trough, and the chicks will gravitate there to join them whether they’re truly hungry or not.

Another issue is overheating. Raised by a broody hen, chicks run around in ambient temperatures checking everything out. When they need a quick warmup they seek her out, satisfy that need, then pop back out ready to explore some more. With heat lamps everything is warm….the walls, the floor, the bedding, the food, the water. People recommend making one end of the brooder warmer than the other. Well, unless the brooder is darn near the size of a small room, that’s just not possible. In fact, folks who set their brooders up in an unused bathtub often comment that the entire bathroom gets a tad too warm for comfort. The best achieved temperature difference in an average brooder is just a few degrees - so where exactly is that “cooler side”? As far as I’m concerned, while raising chicks in a plastic tote may make for easier cleaning, it also poses some risks. There’s no ventilation, for one thing. Plastic not only holds in heat, it also holds in stale, moist air. It holds in any off-gassing from hot plastic. It holds in ammonia. As a friend of mine once put it so well, a plastic tote is like putting them in an Easy Bake Oven. What’s an Easy Bake Oven but a plastic shell heated by a light bulb?

And then there’s stress. Both adults and chicks are prone to stress out easily. After all, just about everything is out to get a chicken dinner. When chicks in the average brooder (and again, we’re talking the old cardboard box, dog crate, or plastic tote that most people start out with), what can they do? They don’t care if the threat is real or imagined, the behavior is the same. They run in panic around the perimeter of the brooder and then pile up in a corner. There’s no Mom to duck under. There’s no bush to hide in. There is no safe place for them to hide. Instinct tells them that chicks on the outside of the pile are likely to be taken first, so they scramble to be in the middle of the heap. Chicks raised under a broody have options. Chicks raised in a box don’t. So they never learn to self-calm. There’s no opportunity for them to hide, be as silent as possible, then peak out to see if the coast is clear. My aim is to give them those spaces, those safety zones. The result is calmer, more confident chicks. They quickly learn that I’m not a threat and either ignore me or come over to say hi.

This is probably a lot more information than your question required. And I recognize that it’s a little (well, more than a little) biased toward a more natural approach to raising chicks. I’m not preaching to convert anyone to the way I do things. I don’t have that right. Each individual chooses a chick raising method that works best for them, and that’s as it should be. But if a two pound hen can raise her broods outdoors among the flock regardless of temperatures, and do it without heat lamps, books, charts, experts and web sites, why are we taught to do it so differently and think we’re doing it better?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Mine seem to eat more, but they also aren't as skinny as the ones that are under the heatplate most if the brooding time. Don't know if that means they get a bit of fat or simply are eating enough. I just know that they get a small bit larger.

 

[3KillerBs]

People recommend making one end of the brooder warmer than the other. Well, unless the brooder is darn near the size of a small room, that’s just not possible.

One reason I love my 4x8, outdoor brooder.

I think that people are reluctant to swap down to a low-enough wattage bulb to allow that distinction between the warming up spot and the rest of the brooder being significantly cooler.

Last May the primary bulb I used was a 60w reptile night bulb. It was plenty warm directly under the bulb with room for a dozen chicks to be cozy. I didn't have to try to heat everything.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

In addition to Blooie's observations, there is some science that says having constant lighting is just not very healthy for chicks. Look up Light-Induced Avian Glaucoma. That's probably the most studied ailment caused by continuous lighting in the brooder, but not the only one.

Studies on genetically and artificially blinded chickens, as well as chickens fitted with goggles to block most or all light from the eyes, have found that regardless of how much light actually hits the eye, the bird's body still reacts the same way as if the light had not been blocked from the eye. This is because the pineal gland in the brain of birds is located close to the skull, and light interacts directly with it, not through the eyes. Now, among the functions of the pineal gland is that, in growing birds, it releases hormones that regulate the growth and development of the eyes. When the pineal gland is triggered by light, chicks' eyes grow rapidly, and when not exposed to light, the eyes rest and may even shrink slightly.

This resting period is important to healthy eye development. Without it, you see eye ailments like LIAG as I mentioned earlier, abnormalities in the retinal fiber layer, and development of nearsightedness or farsightedness. Chicks have been being raised under heat lamps for a century or more now and have done fine, so in the grand scheme this loss of visual clarity probably does not greatly impact their ability to function overall. However, as someone who free-ranges her birds a large portion of the time, it's my preference that they have the best vision they can possibly have, so my preference is to give them a heat source that does not emit light.

There are other studies that have found an increase in aggression and behavioral issues like feather-picking and cannibalism to be connected to use of continuous lighting in the brooder, such excess aggression sometimes even remaining in individuals long after the are removed from continuous lighting later in life. A study I read also found that there was a connection between continuous light and slowed feather growth up to 7 weeks of age, so there is something to that claim. Continuous light may also speed up maturation in males, and may cause pullets to go into lay sooner than if they were not on continuous light. There's actually quite a bit of work out there about the effects of continuous lighting on chickens if one has the time to do some digging.

 

[Blooie]

In addition to Blooie's observations, there is some science that says having constant lighting is just not very healthy for chicks. Look up Light-Induced Avian Glaucoma. That's probably the most studied ailment caused by continuous lighting in the brooder, but not the only one.

Studies on genetically and artificially blinded chickens, as well as chickens fitted with goggles to block most or all light from the eyes, have found that regardless of how much light actually hits the eye, the bird's body still reacts the same way as if the light had not been blocked from the eye. This is because the pineal gland in the brain of birds is located close to the skull, and light interacts directly with it, not through the eyes. Now, among the functions of the pineal gland is that, in growing birds, it releases hormones that regulate the growth and development of the eyes. When the pineal gland is triggered by light, chicks' eyes grow rapidly, and when not exposed to light, the eyes rest and may even shrink slightly.

This resting period is important to healthy eye development. Without it, you see eye ailments like LIAG as I mentioned earlier, abnormalities in the retinal fiber layer, and development of nearsightedness or farsightedness. Chicks have been being raised under heat lamps for a century or more now and have done fine, so in the grand scheme this loss of visual clarity probably does not greatly impact their ability to function overall. However, as someone who free-ranges her birds a large portion of the time, it's my preference that they have the best vision they can possibly have, so my preference is to give them a heat source that does not emit light.

There are other studies that have found excess aggression and behavioral issues like feather-picking and cannibalism to be connected to use of continuous lighting in the brooder, such excess aggression sometimes even remaining in individuals long after the are removed from continuous lighting later in life. A study I read also found that there was a connection between continuous light and slowed feather growth up to 7 weeks of age, so there is something to that claim. Continuous light may also speed up maturation in males, and may cause pullets to go into lay sooner than if they were not on continuous light. There's actually quite a bit of work out there about the effects of continuous lighting on chickens if one has the time to do some digging.

And here I thought I was so smart!! This is all really interesting! I’d never heard this before but it makes sense, especially when we think about how light-sensitive most species are. There are Blind Moles, with no eyesight and skin covering their useless eyes, because spending most of their lives underground means they live in continual darkness with little to no light exposure. Then there are the light sensitive nocturnal animals. Shoot, even in our flocks we see this light dependency. Many choose to provide their flocks with 14-16 hours of light daily, supplementing the reduced winter daylight hours with artificial light to stimulate laying during a time when the pinural gland tells the hen’s bodies to shut down production to give her body a rest.

Thanks, PiP!!

 

[froggyphore]

wow! thanks for all these great detailed replies everyone. stuff like this is why i love BYC so much.