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Baby chicks need to be kept warm to survive. In nature this is done by momma hen providing a warm shelter under her soft belly feathers. The chicks run inside to warm up periodically, then head back out to eat, play, and explore. When you brood chicks at home with no momma hen, that warm place has to be provided for them, and the conventional way of doing that is with a heat lamp.
The lighted area under a heat lamp doesn’t necessarily have a hotter air temperature than the rest of the brooder, but the radiant heat from the light will warm anything under it. Therefore you have an open area where chicks can move around and self regulate their body temperature.
A lesser known setup is to use what is called an Ohio brooder, also known as a hover. This is more of a physical apparatus meant to mimic the underbelly of the mother hen. It’s like an upside down box raised up on short legs so the chicks can duck under the walls and get inside. The inside is heated with two heat lamps and the chicks can move in and out as needed.
Instructions for building a hover are plentiful on the internet, and I built one myself a few years ago. But last year I came across some information claiming that continuous light is not good for chickens’ health. Makes sense to me. Chickens and people alike need cycles of light and dark, sleep and awake, activity and rest.
So I started searching for a way to heat my hover without light. And the answer was pretty simple: a ceramic heater that screws into a light socket. Made for chicken brooders and reptile cages, these heat “lamps” don’t give off any light, just heat. They are available in many different wattages so you can choose a pair that is the right level for your size hover.
I have used these ceramic heat lamps for two batches of chicks now, and I definitely think it is a better option for healthier chickens. However, I have observed that their use requires a couple of adjustments.
First of all, since these ceramic heaters do not give off any radiant heat, they will not swap out with a true heat lamp watt for watt. In other words, you may want to go with a higher wattage than your previous heat lamps. In addition to that you might need to use insulation on top of your hover when perhaps it wasn’t necessary before.
Secondly, while the instructions for building an Ohio Brooder emphasize that you shouldn’t complicate things by using a thermostat, I find that a $30 Inkbird Controller is really helpful with the ceramic heaters. The controller decides when to turn the heaters on or off according to your preset temperature needs. Something like an Inkbird ITC-306T would work for this. Having a controller would also allow you to size the ceramic heat bulbs relatively large and not have to switch them out for smaller ones as the chicks get older.
Have you heard of these ceramic heat lamps? Does it sound like something you would try? Let me know in the comments below!
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