Brooder heat options

greenaus · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:18 am

How'd you go CL? Have you implemented the pot brooder?

If so, did it work as expected?

I recall you were hoping to implement something that more closely matched a natural day/night cycle.

County Lodge · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 3:24 pm

I haven't done it yet. I caould give all the excuses like too busy etc etc etc but just bone lazy I think. I do want to do it though or find an alternative to ligh all the time.

greenaus · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:15 pm

You sound like me. I'm always really "busy", but not so busy that I can't spend a couple of hours watching TV nearly every day and then an hour or so here on APF most days.

I had to go to bed early last night just to catch up on the sleep I'm too "busy" to get.

Good luck with whatever you decide for providing heat. Let us all know. We're all thinking, but not many of us are doing.

As for me, other than the four that spent nearly a week living in the bottom of the incubator (pooooeeeeyyy), none of my chickens in recent weeks have been given any supplemental heat. They were all given to the various foster mums though. In the case of the chickens with Brownie, there's enough of them to keep each other warm.

County Lodge · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 6:19 pm

Yes with my 72 chick I put them out at 2 weeks as there were just too many in the house by then and the sussex and brahmas were jumping out of their brooder.

Peter16 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 6:22 pm

i have combined the terracotta pot with my original heat source idea and currently experimenting with it. photos should be up shortly.
The hardest part was making the hole in the bottom of the pot larger.

County Lodge · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 6:26 pm

That's great to hear Peter. How did you do the bottom bit where you put the thingie in to hold the light bulb. Can you take some close ups for me so I have someidea. And as the hole on the bottem obviously needs to be bigger then it is for the light thingie to go into how did you make the hole bigger? I did tell you I was technically challenged and handman challenged as well but I try hard. :-D

Peter16 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 6:44 pm

ill take a close up, but its messy.
I thought i would try a hole saw drill bit, but having a large hole there already it was going everywhere and i didnt want to ruin the teeth, so i put in the largest brick drill bit i had, and drilled about half a dozen holes in a circle shape (i traced around the lamp so i knew how big the hole had to be) then i very VERY carefully hit out the remaining terracotta.
I wasn't careful enough as you will see in the photos, the hole is isnt exactly a perfect circle, but does the job.
I had the lamp on for about 7 minutes and in just that time the pot was very very hot.
as for the base, i think it is slate of some sort, hoping it will not get too hot and melt my brooder box.

if you would like any part more thoroughly explained, don't be afraid to ask

taking photos now.

greenaus · **Posted:** Sat Nov 01, 2008 4:07 am

County Lodge wrote:

How did you do the bottom bit where you put the thingy in to hold the light bulb. Can you take some close ups for me so I have some idea. And as the hole on the bottom obviously needs to be bigger then it is for the light thingy to go into how did you make the hole bigger? I did tell you I was technically challenged and handyman challenged as well but I try hard. :-D

Depends on where you got the "batten" from. If you've taken it from a lamp, usually the design of it is such that a small hole is all you need.

Just take a look at the where the cord on a lamp leads and you'll see what I mean.

I used battens from lamps for my original home-made incubator....and the Kevatron.

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