What's the cold tolerance of baby chicks?

[matopis]

who wants to chime in on a marital dispute about our chicks? The power company just left a message saying the power in our house could be off for as long as 5 hours on Tuesday. Our chicks will be 7 and 10 days old at this point. Can they take a drop in the temperature for a few hours inside our house, that sits around 60 degrees? Is it really necessary to look for a foster home for a day?

 

[Mahonri]

If it's more than 2 hours, I'd be taking two week old chicks to a foster home. But that's me.

Could you heat the house up real warm prior to the outage and then cover their brooder with blankets... that way they could huddle if it were over 2 hours. How many chicks are there?

 

[matopis]

thanks Mahonri,
Yes important point. We have four chicks, so they aren't going to generating a huge amount of warmth themselves

 

[Othylocke]

There are a few different ways to get around this if you have the time, money, and inclination. The simple thing would be to foster home them. Saturday I left my chicks without the heat lamp for several hours but my house is kept at 76 degrees and it was 84 outside.

 

[nightowl223]

A few ideas, if you don't have a suitable temporary foster home:

If you have a camping heater that doesn't need vented, you could have it running in a small room with them.

You could use hot water bottles in their brooder, and change them out with new hot water as needed - assuming, of course, your water heater isn't electric.

Good luck with the little ones! What an inconvenient time to lose electricity!

 

[RonC]

With only four you could also use the hand/footwarmers you buy in the packages. Put them the chicks in a box with the handwarmers and they should be ok.