What Kind of Heat is best for the chicks?
There are 4 options on heat for your brooding chicks, we discuss pros and cons of all of them so you can make the best decision for your set up.
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Carey: 0:00
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant, and we're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible. So since it's winter time and all that good stuff. We're going to talk about heat sources.
Jennifer: 0:32
Yeah, I could use some heat right now. It's cold. The wind's blowing.
Carey: 0:37
I don't have heat in my house except for what's in the fireplace.
Jennifer: 0:43
My stove's been going all day, so the kitchen's nice and warm.
Carey: 0:48
Let's talk about how not to burn your barn down.
Jennifer: 0:51
Don't use heat lamps.
Carey: 0:55
And the, here's what kills me is in every chicken group this time of year, Somebody posts at least one news article that has a picture of a flaming barn, and it talks about the use of heat lamps, but people still do it.
Jennifer: 1:14
I think people think it's not going to happen to them, but those stories are real.
Carey: 1:19
They do happen.
Jennifer: 1:20
Yes, I actually know a lady in Florida and her barn burned down and she lost. All of her quail not too long ago, actually, maybe in the spring
Carey: 1:34
in Florida.
Jennifer: 1:35
Yes. I don't know why the barn burnt down, but it does happen is what I'm getting at.
Carey: 1:41
I really hate that for the individual and for the birds,
Jennifer: 1:44
but.
Carey: 1:46
Which, this year I talked to RIP and they're having 30s already in Florida South Florida, so it happens.
Jennifer: 1:57
Yep. If you have a heat lamp, which gets, I don't even know how hot a bulb gets. I have no idea. But too hot to touch. And then the metal around it gets too hot to touch. And you get some dust and some straw or, who knows a feed bag, I mean anything would ignite.
Carey: 2:20
Oh yeah, feed bags, they're not only are they good for starting fires in your burn barrel, but they will also rapidly accelerate one in your barn.
Jennifer: 2:29
Yep, and then we hear people say we'll use the ceramic bulbs. I have tried those and they get just as hot.
Carey: 2:38
I was gonna say, they, they get just as hot too.
Jennifer: 2:41
Yeah. So
Carey: 2:43
I just don't
Jennifer: 2:44
use them.
Carey: 2:44
I brewed I do winter hatches and I have a barn that I hatch in. And with that, so in order for my brooder plates,'cause I use the big brooder plates, in order for them to be able to do their job, I did mount a heater in the roof of my barn that is designed for barns. It is a commercial heater. And even with that, I get nervous, but it's hooked up to a thermostat. It only comes on when it goes down below 50 inside the barn, but it's a real deal.
Jennifer: 3:30
I only use brooder plates. I I would guesstimate that I would be on the medium to larger side of hatching, barn size. And I still use individual tubs. And I still use individual 10 or 12 inch brooder plates, and I may have at any given time. I think I think 13 or 14 is about my limit. I have nine on as we speak.
Carey: 4:04
I was going to say how many you say you're on a. So, you do hatch a few birds.
Jennifer: 4:10
I do hatch a few birds, but I'm in between hatches right now, so there's five brooders empty. I only have nine plates going right now.
Carey: 4:18
Wait till Friday.
Jennifer: 4:21
I hatch on Tuesdays. On Tuesday, we will have 14 plates going. Yep.
Carey: 4:27
But those plates, a lot of people say, oh, these plates don't get hot. A bird's internal temperature is like a hundred and four to a hundred and ten. And it's designed for them to be able to have contact with it. So I
Jennifer: 4:44
have to educate a lot of people on how to use brooder plates. They are used incorrectly and if you don't use them correctly, they're not going to work right. So first of all, a brooder plate will not heat up the space. It will only heat up the chick touching it,
Carey: 5:02
right?
Jennifer: 5:03
It's like wrapping yourself in an electric blanket. It's not going to heat up the room. It's just going to heat you up. touching it. So the floor can't be cold. So all my brooders are up off the floor. You set the brooder plate itself on an angle. Depending on which species you're hatching. If it's quail, it might be a half an inch on one side and two inches on the other side. If it's a chicken chick or A Turkey pulp maybe two inches on one side and four inches on the other side. What, and what that does is it allows the chick to go underneath of it and pick, do I wanna be squished up and,'cause I'm chilly and I wanna be squished up and touch as much of it as I can. Or do I just want to let somebody else be squished up and then I touch them and suck their heat out? So it and as they get older, they don't need as much supplemental heat and then they can gauge it themselves that way. They will get on top of it. They will make a mess. That's just a fact of life. I see people put Saran wrap in parchment paper and all kinds of stuff. I do not do that because I feel like that is a. Fire hazard myself.
Carey: 6:24
Wait, you mean plastic melts and catches on fire?
Jennifer: 6:27
Oh, yeah.
Carey: 6:28
When it gets hot.
Jennifer: 6:29
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I won't ever tell anybody to do that so I just take a scraper. They have Harbor Freight. I always get the two. Junk tool stores mixed up. I call them junk stores. Harbor freighter, that other one. Yes, thank you. You can go in there and I think you can get a six pack of plastic assorted size for 4 or something. And I have scrapers all over my barn and. You just scrape it off and go about your day. Just part of having poultry is something's going to get messy. Especially if it's ducks. Now, if the ducks can brood with brooder plates and it can survive the wetness of ducks then you're doing really good.
Carey: 7:17
And ducks, people talk about winter hardiness and that kind of I've seen ducks swimming in the water. while it was snowing.
Jennifer: 7:29
Do you know how they can do that? It's just a little trivia tidbit, but do you know how, why they can do that?
Carey: 7:35
There's got to be something to the down that's in their feathers.
Jennifer: 7:38
Nope. So in their leg, their artery and their vein are side by side touching. And so the warm blood coming out of their heart keeps the return blood in their vein warm so their legs don't freeze.
Carey: 7:54
There you go.
Jennifer: 7:55
Yep. Pretty cool design, huh?
Carey: 7:58
Almost like it was done on purpose.
Jennifer: 8:00
Yeah. So my ducks will be out there swimming in what about a two foot diameter circle sometimes, and they're perfectly fine.
Carey: 8:12
So how do you suggest people heat their hen house?
Jennifer: 8:17
I don't right now I, everywhere I see people are buying the painter's plastic and stapling it up. If you want to, if you got nothing better to do, but my walls are wire, and the wind is blowing probably 40 mph right now, and it's about 30 degrees outside. My chickens are just fine, up until people had fancy coops, they lived in trees. The wind blows in the trees and the trees move
Carey: 8:47
and C2, when you put that plastic on, if it's not 110 percent secure, every time it makes a little ripple sound or something like that's going to stress your birds out. And when they're stressed out, their health is not as good. Their fertility is not as good and they don't chicken. They're nervous. They're afraid someone's trying to get them. Like mine. So for me, I've got wire cages and my, I have in some of them, I have metal like sheets of metal around the bottom to help ward off predators because I live in the woods and I have a lot of raccoons. And I have the metal there. So if they, when chicks hatch out and they poked their head out or whatever, that doesn't happen. But. I've got some of my single comb large fowl that they won't, they don't want down there. It's in the thirties and the wind's blowing outside right now and they're up on the top roost, fully exposed to the wind and they're, they got their comb just flopping in the wind and I'm like, dude, you gotta be cold, My, one of my Rhode Island Reds, his name is Houdini and, he's just flapping the thing in the wind and I'm like, I don't want you to get frostbite. So I actually did get a barrier and stick it up there on the side where the wind mainly comes from. And I bolted it to the Kate, the fencing or. Yeah, the fencing to the post to block it right at the roost, because, chickens ain't that smart. But aside from that, I'm not putting a heat lamp in there.
Jennifer: 10:39
So let me tell you what happened to me. It'd be. Not last year, but the year before when that Arctic freeze came through at Christmas and it was like zero. And that was the reason why I insulated the barn. Okay. So my barn faces South. My coops are the main, are the lean to's. side. So one lane two, which is the main coop, faces west, which is where the weather comes from. And the other side faces east, gets the morning sun. No wind on that side. When that Arctic cold came through here, I had zero issues with the birds on the west side that were getting the full brunt of the wind. The coop filled with snow. Zero issues. Nobody was sick. Nobody got frostbite. Nothing happened to any of those birds. The east side that was protected from the wind, every one of them birds got frostbite. Now both sides are wire walls. Now you explain that one. That doesn't follow everything on social media at all, does it?
Carey: 11:57
No, it don't. But see last year one of my Rhode Island Reds did get frostbit on his comb. And because I didn't put Vaseline or none of the other crap on there. Because they're chickens.
Jennifer: 12:12
I didn't either.
Carey: 12:14
That Houdini is, he's special. I just put that up there to block the direct wind and, I will say that if it's going to be down below freezing for an extended period of time he does have a nice little cozy space inside the barn.
Jennifer: 12:33
Yeah.
Carey: 12:33
That he'll come into.
Jennifer: 12:35
So if I if it gets like that Arctic freeze again comes through something like that, I'll just bring out the show cages and bring everybody inside the barn, but I'm not going to do the frostbite again, but that will be the ones that are, first of all, the show birds. But the ones that are on the east side of the barn, not the ones on the west side of the barn. They'll be fine.
Carey: 13:00
They're on the west side.
Jennifer: 13:01
The upper west side.
Carey: 13:02
That's right. So let's talk about commercial style breeders like the GQFs and the Hats and Times. Like the
Jennifer: 13:12
tower ones.
Carey: 13:13
Yeah, Tractor Supply used to, they actually, I want to say last year they quit making them. They do still have some stock somewhere around. I think Producers Pride is who made it for them. But I've asked locally and they said they can't get them anymore because I actually found one of those units for a little of nothing. And I need, it needed some pieces. So I was trying to see how much they were. Did
Jennifer: 13:41
you ever go look at it up close?
Carey: 13:43
Yeah,
Jennifer: 13:44
okay. Yeah, that's a big piece of equipment
Carey: 13:49
They're massive.
Jennifer: 13:50
Yeah, and you need to be able to access all four sides
Carey: 13:54
Which means you need to have it essentially in the middle of the floor
Jennifer: 14:00
Yep There was a guy locally that had a five sack of one and it was just basically a giveaway price and I went over there actually twice Trying to talk myself into getting it because I could use it And I just couldn't bring myself to give up that much for space. It's just, it was massive and all it basically is a metal, I don't know, shelving unit with a tractor supply heat plate in it. Did you look at that? That's all it was.
Carey: 14:32
The heat plates that they have are the producer pride, the big ones that have the low and the high.
Jennifer: 14:40
Yep.
Carey: 14:41
And I have in my wooden brooder box, the one that's like a coffin. I actually have, it's two feet wide. No, yeah, it's two feet deep and eight feet long and it has a, Barrier in the middle. The thing does look like a coffin now. I have since retrofitted it with a couple of feeders that I can know spills that I can access from the outside and but inside of it, I've got some of those brooder plates that go in the tractor supply tower. Because they're huge. It's like the what is that company? Renicot, the one that makes the good cups and all that. It's as big as their a hundred dollar one. It's huge. They work pretty well, so yeah, but those brooders, they're nice, but they're not very portable.
Jennifer: 15:42
They're very heavy
Carey: 15:43
and when you're not hatching, they're in the way.
Jennifer: 15:46
When is that? Is there a time when we're not hatching?
Carey: 15:52
Okay. Valid point. So they're just in the way. We
Jennifer: 15:58
have a mutual friend and she has several of those. She likes them. They work great. And, but she has them in the middle of her floor so she can access all four sides. I
Carey: 16:07
say there, she's got them in the middle of her floor and she has rows of, cages on either side of them,
Jennifer: 16:14
but
Carey: 16:15
they're, she's, they're easily accessible.
Jennifer: 16:17
Yes.
Carey: 16:18
And for me, I could brew differently and have more cages there. Now I will say the Hatch and Time Brewers, Do take up less of a floor like a footprint on the floor.
Jennifer: 16:34
Yes, they do fit up against the wall.
Carey: 16:37
Yeah They have a
Jennifer: 16:40
nice heater they
Carey: 16:42
do
Jennifer: 16:42
they have a thermostat on them so you can adjust the temperature.
Carey: 16:46
Yep
Jennifer: 16:48
the hatching Time Brooders would be fantastic for somebody that doesn't have a lot of space, can push them up against the wall. It has a light place, a place for a light bulb inside the heaters on a thermostat and the boxes on these commercial brooders, they don't let a draft in and that's what we're always talking about. They're up off the floor. They don't get a draft so that. That ambient heat from the heaters, from the, that brooder plate. In that case, it does heat up the space because those are built to retain the heat in there. Plus you've got all that body heat from the chicks.
Carey: 17:34
And another thing that I do like about them, they're not. I would call them like half a tower because they're not as wide and you can fully access them from the front. When you do get, cause I have three or four of them that are, I have three or four stacks that are, or high. When you do get to the point where one of them is empty, just wheel it out of the barn, crank up your pressure washer, boom, clean, ready to go. Spray it with some sanitizer. Let it dry. You're ready for another. A lot of hatching.
Jennifer: 18:15
And that was another thing when I was looking at that producer's pride one. And honestly, I'm not going to say the GQF because I've never put my arm inside the GQF one, but I could not reach across the producer's pride one. They're physically
Carey: 18:30
the same size.
Jennifer: 18:31
Oh, okay. So I couldn't reach, therefore I wouldn't have been able, the chicks run away from your arm, trying to grab them. I would not have been able to reach them all. And so I would have either had to have help on the far side or used a little net.
Carey: 18:46
Butterfly net going in there.
Jennifer: 18:48
Yeah. Yeah.
Carey: 18:50
See for me, the thing that, that turned me off on those is. The whole point in having a lot of brooder space is for a lot of chicks and the poo tray was like half inch deep and if you didn't empty it out a couple of times, if you had it full and you don't empty it out a couple of times a day, you're going to be in trouble with the hatching time ones, they're set up like they're quail cages and you can let the poop stack up. Or you have to take it out.
Jennifer: 19:24
Yeah. We like the lower maintenance, don't we?
Carey: 19:26
Lower maintenance, the better.
Jennifer: 19:28
All right. Now let's talk about the original chick heater. The
Carey: 19:33
hen.
Jennifer: 19:34
Now I've got some coachins and them are some broody mamas. They want to set all, I think they are really close to being as broody as silkies, the S word. The silkies. So they will set on those eggs and keep them nice and constant. And then they'll keep those chicks warm. I'm all about, if you're a, just a backyard breeder and you don't need to brood, let those broody hens take care of those chicks. They're going to be the best low maintenance way of doing it.
Carey: 20:09
Yeah. Yeah. I've got, so with it being as cold as it is right now, I actually have in one pen some six week old chicks that have never been inside of a brooder and in another pen some four week old chicks that have never been inside a brooder, unless you consider the five gallon bucket laying on its side where they hatched from the brooder. Because when they were, before they got to where they could fly up on a roost. The hen would get them inside the nesting box at night and she was their brooder plate.
Jennifer: 20:47
Let me just tell you how broody these coachins are. So I brought them into the barn because I ran out of space on the east side of my barn and had to bring two brooder sets inside the barn. And of course the light stimulated them and they have, laid one egg a day. So there's four hens in one and two or three hens in the other one. And each one has laid one egg in each pen and I went in there yesterday to get the egg And they were fighting over who was going to sit on the one egg One egg and there's four big massive birds. I'm gonna sit on that egg
Carey: 21:29
I'm like, you
Jennifer: 21:29
haven't even started laying yet. They're
Carey: 21:32
fighting for it. It's a thing like I have, this is going to be my first chicks that have never been inside of a brooder or an incubator for me. And I'm actually excited to be able to hatch off of those because to me They're getting the full experience in the colder months. So hybrid vigor should be way up there in these birds.
Jennifer: 22:01
Okay. So let's talk about the literal use of using a hen for a brooder. So you do not need to put a heat lamp on her. Cause then you're just going to cook her. So a hen does not need supplemental heat when she has chicks on her. We see that a lot on Facebook. And you, she does need a quiet space. There seems to be a lot of controversy of do you separate her? Do you not separate her? The technical answer is no, you don't really have to separate her. She will take care of those chicks and keep them safe from the other birds in there. The reason why I encourage you to separate is because you can't. Physically give chick starter and water to the chicks because the other birds will eat it, knock it over, drink it, and the chicks won't get it. So the separation is literally for the chicks nutrition more so than any other reason.
Carey: 23:07
So what I've been doing because of that is the ones in those pens I started giving them a 20 percent All Flock.
23:18
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Carey: 24:00
Yes, that's a little low for a chick, but I gave them some of that, put some breeder supplement in it, stirred it up, mixed it with the oil and all that stuff like you're supposed to. And, at four weeks old, these chicks were fine. Getting up on a roost is three feet off the ground. They're obviously eating and growing healthy and strong, but that's because I had the same thing. Do I separate them? Do I not, where do I put them? Because I did not want to put them inside. I wanted them to grow up outside in that natural habitat. As natural as a pen can be. So I just. Started feeding them all a crumble.
Jennifer: 24:46
Now, what I have done is I have put up like a little piece of fencing with two by two, two by four holes in it and a hoop in there and put their feed and water inside of it so they could come and go and get to it. but the bigger chickens couldn't. And then mama would still, could still nest on them at night, wherever she wanted to. But, and that was usually right beside that, is where I would put that. Now, the bad side, there's some downsides to using a hen. Not all hens are good mamas. Sometimes they knock them out, they get cold different things can happen. Snakes, rats other birds can be mean to them. Gotta be mindful and observant of your hen. And make sure she's going to be a good broody.
Carey: 25:43
that was me, and I was worried about the rooster, but no issues.
Jennifer: 25:48
Yeah, they don't care. I've never had one care. He just wants to make sure he tags that mama as soon as she's back in there and ready again. That's the only thing.
Carey: 25:59
Look, I'm going to tell you this. I have seen her come out at like when they were little. He'd come out of the nest box. He would be, he would go over there and do his little dance and take care of his business. And then he would actually crawl in the nest box while she would go eat.
Jennifer: 26:17
Oh, that's sweet. That
Carey: 26:19
was a good brood fowl. He knew his job.
Jennifer: 26:24
Yeah. All right. I think that's the only four ways of heating your your chicks. Now I can give you a couple tips.
Carey: 26:33
Let's do tips and tricks.
Jennifer: 26:35
If your electricity goes out, I have everything in my barn is on the battery backup surge protectors. And obviously they're only going to last as long as you have a draw on there. But it will last you at least an hour and give you time to get out there, cover them up, make alternate plans. You're not going to be in a panic. What it's doing is it's buying you time to find out how long the electric's going to be out, And make some plans, which you should have some plans. You need some heat packs on hand. You need, tubs to put them in to contain their own body heat. Also cardboard box works fine with some hand warmers or heat packs. Um, like those shipper packs that I don't even know what they're called. That I put the heat packs in the boxes. It's
Carey: 27:33
the heat packs.
Jennifer: 27:35
Is that what they're called?
Carey: 27:36
Actually, I actually think that there is a brand of them out there that says heat pack.
Jennifer: 27:41
Yeah. I just have a big box of them out there. When I'm shipping chicks, they just stick to the side of the box and I put them in there. But anyway, they're good for 72 hours. So you need to, they're not expensive, maybe what, 2 a piece or something just to have a box of them on hand.
Carey: 27:56
Yeah, and if you got if you got a bunch of those, you can take them out. The ones that I get when you open the cellophane or mylar or whatever it is, the air activates them that takes them a little while to build up heat, but you'd shake them up real good and stick them in there and yeah, they're good for three days.
Jennifer: 28:16
Yeah. You can just put them in a, put them in a cardboard box. That's not overly huge. It needs to, be smaller to contain their body heat and to contain that heat from that heat pack and some air holes. And, they'd be fine. Just think about if you shipped them across the country, they'd be fine in there for a few days. Same concept,
Carey: 28:35
I'll say this. That place that we talked about earlier, Harbor Freight, you can go to Harbor Freight and if you plug all your brooder plates into a surge protector, like you should, you unplug that thing out of the wall, plug it into an extension cord. Run it outside to your little four or five hundred dollar generator that you have. Cause a thousand watt generator run 10 of those plates.
Jennifer: 29:00
Yeah. And keep your refrigerator cold too, huh? I actually
Carey: 29:04
do that.
Jennifer: 29:06
And yep. I think that's about it for heat sources, emergency and then the four main ones. I can't think of anything else.
Carey: 29:16
Oh, that's it.
Jennifer: 29:17
Yeah, all then that's a wrap as far as I'm concerned.
Carey: 29:20
Y'all have a good one.
Jennifer: 29:21
Bye.
Carey: 29:22
Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
29:50
Mhm.
