Wisconsin "Cheeseheads"

[Terri O]

Good evening! I agree with Jim about the ceramic heaters...but for a different reason. THe light bulbs in the coop if you have them on a thermo-cube would be going on and off right? THose bulbs get so hot so quick that I would think the glass on the bulb would stand a good chance of breaking. I have found that with the heat bulbs they last a long time if they are never turned off; but once you do...poof! THey are recommending those ceramic heaters for reptiles now too...less stressful than lights.

Well I left work at 5:30 and DD25 called to pick her up at her work. The truck would NOT go forward...so I stopped at the extension office to get some stuff for the 4H meeting and them picked her up. We got home and she and DH went directly back to her work to see if they could get the truck moving--no dice! SO they had to unload the feed and bring it home and then put it in my truck. I was on my way to the meeting. We didnt get too much accomplished...planned the banner for the center, that was about it. We were very short on members...more parents than anything! (and babies!)

BCC--I do believe that that add may belong to Gothchick...she said she had some special chickens to sell and wanted to trade for rabbits....
Ken--glad you got your yard cleared up! Wanna come and do mine? I am always amazed at the amount of stuff that gets left out during the summer! If you dont pick it up now...spring looks even worse!

Maybe I can get some done tomorrow...

Well--gotta go and enter some stuff in for the club before I forget...I am such a great leader!--NOT! Sweet dreams all...
JIm tomorrow I am building a hay house for my birds too...facing the South right? Did you put anything but a tarp over the top? I was thinking a few sheets of that fat yellow insulation that they like to nibble on so much! (or maybe not!)
Terri O

 

[bigzio]

Evening Everyone.... Glad the hatch went well Ken. Seems like you have the chicken math working just like it should. Plenty of winter preperations to finish here yet. I hope the weather stays halfway human here for a while yet. With hunting and hopefully venzun to process along with Thanksgiving in the mix, this week coming up will be busy for sure.

Yep awful pricy for those BCC....The price will prolly come down when nobody is willing to pay that much.

Linn, the heaters with the light bulbs are prolly as safe as one can get. The bulb is inside and away from the bedding. Heat lamps are quite dangerous compared to a standard light bulb.

Thanks for the kind words regarding the elderly neighbor lady from my youth. It was nice to visit with the boys for about 2 hours. Alot of good moments for sure.

Be Safe... bigz

 

[Celtic Chick]

Quote:
That is a very good point. I don't turn my heat lamp on & off when it gets cold. It just runs 24/7, so that is probably why mine has for lasted so long. I think I've had the same bulb for 3 years now. Yikes, I can't believe it's been that long.......

Ah, TO, I just saw some interesting ceramic reptile heaters on Amazon, now that you mention it. They look similiar to heat bulbs but do not give off any light. But it sounds like you need a brooder lamp with a ceramic base so it doesn't melt. Must get pretty hot, but their wattage is lower than heat bulbs. There were even some reviews from people who use them in their coops and brooders. I don't know about them not giving off any light though. Some people complained that you don't know if they're working or not, at least not at a glance like you can with a light bulb. They are intriguing, though, and supposedly last for years.

See all the things you're learning, Lori? Like how often old chicken owners bicker about heating their coops.

ETA: Here is a link if anyone was interested. They come in 60, 100 and 150 watt sizes.
http://www.amazon.com/Zoo-Med-Repti...TF8&coliid=I3ULQJBS8176FM&colid=1VEAMVGS5EQB0

 

[GothChick]

Yep that's my ad from Craigslist. LOL! I started if off high because I was accepting offers or trades and I HATE Craigslist with a passion. Anytime you put "make an offer" I get people e-mailing me with the whole "I can't afford to pay for them but I can give them a great home" story. It drives me nuts. I also found that if I would put the actual price I want on the ad people will still try to e-mail me with super low ball offers, so by starting the prices off really high people think I am giving them a great deal if I take way less then what I was asking in the ad. I used to study business in school and it was one of the sales tactics we were taught. You always up price an item, that way you can knock the price down to what you really want and people think they are getting a great deal. Some people e-mailed me and offered like $5 a piece. I think that is crazy because hatcheries have low quality birds and charge $10-$15 a chick for BCM and then you have to wait for them to start laying.

 

[GothChick]

Well good news! I have a lady coming Saturday and she is trading me some bunnies for my Easter Eggers and my Brahma hen. I have another person coming on Sunday and is paying $50 for both my BCM and my Oliver Egger. So I guess my business lessons paid off. LOL! My mother will be so proud. I also have someone that might be trading me rabbits supplies for my chicken supplies.

We got 2 new bucks to add to my rabbit breeding stock. They came from a breeder in Harvard, Illinois. I'm really happy with them and they cost a pretty penny but the are amazing quality and I wanted to make sure that I good stock to start out with. I'm thinking of trying new chickens in the future but would stick with breeds that are better layers like Leghorns, Barred Rocks, etc. Hopefully I would have better luck with them.

 

[jvls1942]

good morning,, and WOAH !!! I am not buying that kind of ceramic heaters... they cost about $40.oo at petco. I bought a small electric heater that is 6 inches wide , six inches deep and 10 inches tall.. It also has a fan to blow the heat into the room.. NOT the kind you screw into a light socket.. I have two of those also..

Light bulbs can sort of explode when they burn out.. I have seen it happen more than once, and there were a shower of sparks when the bulb went.. back in the day, in the hay mows, the light fixture had a bulb and then an outer covering like a thick glass a canning jar.. so if the bulb did burn out that way, the sparks stayed in the jar..

I don't know who said it, I am thinking CC? about putting the heat bulb on a thermo block ? it would be going off and on, then, no? I must be buying the cheap $6.oo heat bulbs, but I have never had one last for more than a couple of months,, and I have had several not make it even two weeks.. with constantly being on.. I even had a couple not make it a week and one recently made it one day.. and I have good ceramic sockets..

I concede this much,,, any heat source could be a danger in a coop..

and like I said before,, this is what I am most comfortable with..I am not saying anybody is wrong..

.........jiminwisc........

 

[Cindlady]

Last winter I had a heat lamp (bulb) in the coop and just turned it when when temps were going to be about 2OF or less. It did survive the winter (at least 'till Mar. when I dropped the lamp) I paid 6.99 for it. Then I heard horror stories and looked for something safer. I decided on an oil filled radiator. I put it on a board and put hardware cloth around it and a board over the top. It worked pretty well I think. It took a while to get it "set" right as far as temp goes, and the board got full of Poop, but all in all it was good. I'll do that this year, only I'm going to put the thermo cube on too and see if it works better. As for water.... I haul mine down in 2 - 1gal. Ice tea Jugs. They're heavier than milk jugs but same idea.

The big one is a little over a gal. The smaller one is about 2qt. Last year I cut down a cheap laundry basket to put over the top to keep the straw out, this year it's on cement blocks and is straw free.

Now that I have a pop door I think it will help keep heat in during the day, at least better than last year when I had to leave the people door open 10".

Also, the door opens to the west... so any west, northwest wind blew right in! I'm going to put up a "wind block" for the pop door.

Night, night!

 

[jvls1942]

good morning, I have 3 ea 3-gal waterers and 3 ea 1-gal waterers.. I have a spare of each also.. I start the day with filling the spares, and then rotating the others until they are all filled and I have new spares..

I put a cement block under the hanging waterer in the chicken coop. I did not check it to see if they knocked the base off this time.. I will check it when I go do the feed and water thing..

as some of you know, I hate to have anything on the floor in my coops, so that cement block really goes against my grain..

All of my Thai's and a few odds and ends of chickens have taken up residence in the open lean-to.. I want to get them to use one of the closed-in coops for the winter.. I will have to build another roost before I can make that happen..

when it gets colder and the geese quit laying eggs, I will leave the geese outside for the winter.. they seem to like that better.

........jiminwisc........

 

[kristip]

ok so I am in crazy lady mode... feel like I am birthing my own children here... if you remember I had a young broody that we got fertile eggs for from Carol and I thought she was getting up too much from them and they were not fertile so Terri O sent some eggs my way ( thanks ladies)... so needless to say the first batch of 3, 1 was stepped on last week ( think it was going bad anyway) but I think i hear an egg cheeping in there... so we may have at least one from that first batch ( 21 is today) that made it... we will see if it hatches or not. Now remember that I moved Eggy our broody to the garage in a large plastic dog kennel. I have been letting her out once or twice a day to poop(man those broody poops are huge!) should I do that still since we are close? Should I put a heat lamp on them in garage? Do you think that a baby would be warm enough in attached garage with mom or move them to basement ( DH will not be thrilled of this option, but if it is for best). Broody picked the wrong season for this one!

so flustered here as a new mom. Then I am trying to see if I can find an incubator for the other eggs if she gets off of them to spend time with a new chick. Maybe I shoudl forgo my xmas idea of getting this from my MIL and get it now.

I am like a giddy kid in candy store.

 

[Terri O]

Good sunny morning! It felt like a heat wave out there when I let the dogs out this morning...40*!!! I guess I oughta get off of this thing and get out there. I was planning on working in the house today cause I thought it was going to be 20 and windy again....I am now cooking Thanksgiving dinner so I guess I need to clean in here too! I am having one of my clients over and DH and DS22 will be here. A small gathering...but at least we will have leftovers! My brother is not pleased...I talked to him this morning. I told a white lie too (shhhhh!) I told him that it is the other side of the fam's turn to have us over...I dont understand why our holidays are always fraught with fighting of who "gets to have us" over! (all I can think is that it must be my pumpkin and pecan pies!) We certainly are not the life of the party.... arent Holidays supposed to be happy? I think this is why I always cant wait for January to get here!

So about this whole heating thing...in the threads here it recommends that your birds be draft free but still have proper ventilation. Nothing about providing any heat at all for them--after all they are wearing down coats! In my opinion they do not need any supplemental heat...just the water does. My birds go in and out of the coop all winter...stand around int he snow...scratch and do chicken stuff like during the summer. Only during really windy days (or sub-zero) do they want to stay inside...I am guessing it's because the wind blows under their feathers and chills them?

Well, the air is up to 43! My hose has got to be thawed! There is a GOD! So today I will install all the newly bleached heated buckets and everything will be happy except my bank account when the electric bill goes through!

SO I better get at it! Have a great day! Terri O

ETA: Yeah Kris...that is why it is a bad idea to have eggs of two different ages under a hen! If there isnt much of a difference in hatching dates you could try giving her food and water right near where she is. Then she might not go too far and bring the chick back on the eggs for enough time for them to hatch. The incubator as a back-up is a good idea though.