Chicken heater

Saturday night our power went out at about 1 am. Since it was pretty cool out, I was worried about the chicks. At only 10 days old, they still needed heat. As we waited and waited for the power to come back on, it got cooler and cooler and I got more and more concerned. So I decided to rig up the most pathetic chick heater. I took a thermacare heatwrap (the kind for your back) and taped it to the side of a small cardboard box. Then I wondered if they would peck the heck out of it and get to the stuff inside (I have no idea what is in there) or if they would lie against it and get cooked. So I needed to cover it with something. I found a sheet that had a rip in it that I was saving just for something like this. I put the box on the sheet, gathered the sheet up around it, tied it on the top (with another strip of the sheet) and cut the excess. It looked like a bizarre gift for someone who has low standards. We went out and slipped it into the coop and watched as the chicks stared, walked toward it, and pecked at it. That was it. They didn't snuggle up to it. In fact, they didn't even snuggle up to each other even though it was, by this time, below 70 degrees in the coop (for week 2 they are supposed to be around 85 or 90 degrees). We went out a bit later and they still were just walking around (and jumping on top of the heater-nowhere near where the actual heat was) and still not bothered by the chill-which was at a cool 65 by now. The next day our power finally came on around 5 pm so we went 16 hours without power. Clearly we were more stressed out by this than the chicks. Sunday afternoon Jenny took these pictures of them on and around the heat box. And some just sitting around.