Cornish cross feeding schedule problems.

[Corgo]

I posted this in the chicks section, but I guess it’s better suited for here. Need a little help with my Cornish Crosses please! This is my first time raising meat chickens, I have raised lots of layers and frankly they are easier I think. Lol I bought 40 and everything was going well. I started picking food up for 12 hours at night on Day 5 after reading instructions to do so. Today is Day 7 .. Well they spend all night up, losing their minds from the lack of food. They are in the brooder with lights on them, it’s in the 30’s/40’s here at night. This morning I found one of the smaller ones trampled from their craziness. What am I doing wrong, how do I fix it? They have plenty, plenty of room in the brooder, I have thermometers down under the lights, they are staying plenty warm and have room to self regulate. They have three fresh water jugs. It’s the lack of food, they pretty much go into a frenzy running over top of and crashing into each other. Should I leave food 24/7 for them until they get old enough to go in the coop? (no lights at night, so they’d sleep)

 

[Birdinhand]

I use a mother heating pad, I hate lights, they jack up their metabolism too much. you can cut and paste the address from my signature and read up on how I approach this in detail. they need to sleep at night, otherwise taking food away from them is practically torture, IMHO. the only way to get them to sleep at night is to have them in the dark. by using a mother heating pad or radiant heat plate, they get into a natural cycle and have a lot fever problems. I don't remove the food at all and I get zero leg issues. expect to lose one or two here and there, it seems that they are most prone to heart problems. finding ways around the issues is well worth the hassle, once you get it dialed in, it goes pretty smoothly and the results are unbeatable with any other breed.

 

[Corgo]

Birdinhand, thank you for the reply, I appreciate the help! I will check out your post and do some reading. I knew there would be a learning curve, was just kind of sad one got trampled because of it. I put their food back down early when I walked in this AM, poor things were wigging out. I need to see if I can change their heat source I guess so they sleep. It’s been unseasonably cold here at night for this time of year.

 

[Molpet]

I also use the heating pad, but with fewer chicks. Not sure how that works with so many.
Also I have had a chick die for no reason... if I didn't take it out immediately the body would be trampled by the time I got done with the chores.

 

[wolfwalker]

Darkness at night is the key. Any light, including the so called red heat lamps will keep them up. If you must have a lamp style heater due to the cost or availability of heat plate or heat pad, then switch to a ceramic reptile heater bulb. There is no light actually produced. It is like an old style electric stove top inside ceramic. Just watch those get very hot to the touch. If you do the ceramic heater, try to enclose the top of your brooder to let the heat that collects to make its way down and go out the sides of the brooder. the biggest thing to remember is that heat rises with this type of bulb unlike the radiant heat of the mass market heat lamp bulbs.

 

[Corgo]

Ok, thanks so much for continued help! It sounds like I need a brooder plate .. since I don’t think a heating pad is going to work for 39 chicks. What size brooder plate would fit all of them or is there even one big enough? They are getting pretty big already and I’m going to have to keep them warm enough until they are feathered out.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't have the link but a few years back a lady that had used both heat lamps and a heating pad cave wrote up a comparison of the two methods. For some things one was better than the other. One of her comments was that for larger numbers the heat lamp worked better than the heating pad cave. If I remember right her break-over point was in the upper teens. That was not a heat plate but I thought she brought up a good point.

@Corgo welcome to the forum, glad you joined. For that number of chicks you might do an internet search on a "chicken hover brooder". I think @ChickenCanoe calls it an Ohio brooder. The USDA promoted them in WWII because they were so energy efficient. It's basically an inverted shallow box with a heat source lower down. The inverted box traps hot air. Not sure what your heat plate looks like and if it can be low enough but it might make a good heat source.

 

[Morrigan]

I echo the advice about heating plates being preferable to heating lights.

That being said, before I discovered heating plates -- and in cases where a large number of chicks make it impractical to use the one I had-- I have raised cx chicks with heating lamps many times. Where I have done so, I gave them access to food 24/7 for their first two weeks. Starting at two weeks, I gradually started reducing the food until, by week 4, I was only putting out food twice a day, each morning and evening. I put out enough, so that everyone got their fill and wandered away from food dish to go collapse in a food comma. It took about 20 or 30 minutes. Then, no more food until the next feeding.

By 4 weeks, they were done with the need for heat lights, so they could sleep through the night, and were also old enough to go outside to forage during the day. Giving them a chance to eat weeds, chase bugs and look for old produce I would scatter about, seemed to help them from losing their minds when the food wasn't around.

I had really good luck with this system, getting nice sized healthy birds, that I would butcher between 8 and 13 weeks of age.

 

[Corgo]

I don't have the link but a few years back a lady that had used both heat lamps and a heating pad cave wrote up a comparison of the two methods. For some things one was better than the other. One of her comments was that for larger numbers the heat lamp worked better than the heating pad cave. If I remember right her break-over point was in the upper teens. That was not a heat plate but I thought she brought up a good point.

@Corgo welcome to the forum, glad you joined. For that number of chicks you might do an internet search on a "chicken hover brooder". I think @ChickenCanoe calls it an Ohio brooder. The USDA promoted them in WWII because they were so energy efficient. It's basically an inverted shallow box with a heat source lower down. The inverted box traps hot air. Not sure what your heat plate looks like and if it can be low enough but it might make a good heat source.

Thank you so much for the kind welcome
I did read about the Ohio brooders and it seems like a great ( and economical ) way to keep a big bunch of chicks warm!! With the lights inside the box though .. I think I would encounter the same problems with the chicks wanting to stay up and eat all night unfortunately.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Then use a heat source that is not a light.