Auto-Eggs

Chicks grow fast. The photo on the left is a chick about 3 and half weeks old, complete with a decent set of wing feathers, a nice little comb coming in, and they have giant feet. The weather has been cool and sunny here this past week, and the chicks spent their first night in the hen house. It was equipped with a 120 watt red flood light during the evening hours, and the chicks were noticeably cold. My thermometers read an outside temp of 54 °F. They don't have all their feathers at 3 and a half weeks, so they piled themselves in the corner to keep warm. So I decided it was time to get more heat, so I bought a 250 watt red heat lamp to keep on during the night. I tested it and realized with the small chicken door closed it was too hot in there. If I left it open, they would get too cold. So I put in a burlap curtain to have this middle ground so the chicks would be comfortable. And the second night they were sleeping a bit spaced out and one even jumped up on the roost.

Now the chicks are comfortable, but with the door open it leaves them vulnerable to predators. Also, while I was testing the heat lamp, I noticed the timer thing wasn't going to work for me. The morning was sunny, making the hen house 85 °F with the light on, shut it off and it dropped to an ideal 70 °F. Later in the day the clouds came in and it got windy and cool, but with the light off, the temp in the hen house reached 58 °F. I turned it back on, and we get back to the 70 °F. Then later at night it got even colder, and I had to shut the chicken's door to maintain the temp. I have a full time job and cannot really hit light switches all day, and I can't keep leaving the door wide open all night. Not to mention winter is just around the corner, and any sort of miscalculation could cause the chickens to freeze to death. This is Alaska after all. What is a chicken farmer to do?

Luckily there is this great company called KKONTROLS. They sell weatherproof 120v thermostats specifically designed for barns and greenhouses. I picked up the simplest one they had on their Ebay store for under $40 shipped. They have dual purpose ones that run a heat source in the cold and some exhaust fan or air conditioner in the hotter temps, and some with remote sensors, or even fancy programmable ones. But I just wanted it to do one thing...keep my chickens warm, without over heating them. This thermostat is designed to take on higher amperage heaters and heat lamps, and has a 2.5 degree differential. The differential is the difference between the set temperature, and its upper temperature (heating) or lower temperature (cooling). For example: a heating thermostat with a differential of 3° set to 70 °F will kick on when the temp gets lower than 70 °F, and kick off when it reaches 73 °F. On the opposite side: a cooling thermostat with a differential of 3° set to 70 °F will kick on when the temp gets higher than 70 °F, and kick off when it reaches 67 °F.

In other words, I really wont have to worry about temperature once this gets installed, I can open and close doors, and the outside temperature can fluctuate all it wants. No timer guess work on how cold its gonna be on any given day. I got my trusty thermostat on the case. All I have to worry about is making sure the chickens get enough light, and keep my eyes on the thermometers I have installed in the hen house. And so the term was coined...."Auto-Eggs"!