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The $18 heat lamp that turned my chicken coop into a sauna
Last January I set up one of those red heat lamps in my coop in Barre to keep the girls warm during that cold snap, but I aimed it too close to the roost and woke up to feathers everywhere and my hens panting like they ran a marathon. It took me 3 hours to rewire the whole setup with a thermostat timer, anyone else nearly cook their flock before figuring out the distance thing?
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jenniferb5314d ago
Skip the thermostat entirely. Those birds are tougher than you think, mine survived a week straight at -10 without any heat and they were fine, just fluffed up and huddled together. The real problem here isnt the lamp distance, its that you babied them in the first place so they lost their natural cold tolerance. If you hadnt introduced the heat they wouldve handled that snap like champs and you wouldve saved yourself $18 and three hours of rewiring. My neighbor in Hardwick keeps his coop completely unheated every winter and his hens lay all season, no panting, no melted feathers, no nonsense. Honestly the only reason people use those lamps is because they feel guilty watching birds sit in the snow, but chickens are basically tiny dinosaurs with down jackets built in.
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