Brinsea EcoGlow Chick Brooder Review
With spring right around the corner, I thought it would be an appropriate time to review the new EcoGlow Chick Brooder by Brinsea – a product that I’m confident will be valuable to many poultry hobbyists. Brinsea has a well-established reputation within our hobby as innovators of quality avian products. The new Brinsea EcoGlow Chick Brooder is no exception to that tradition and represents yet another example of product innovation in the form of low-energy consumption and significant safety advantages when compared to traditional heat lamp brooders. As such, the Brinsea EcoGlow Chick Brooder will likely prove to be a must-have for many small-scale poultry hobbyists, particularly for the energy-conscious poultry keeper and those with small children involved in the poultry hobby. Like many other poultry hobbyists, we at Ozark Bantams have been successfully using Brinsea Incubators for our artificial hatching needs for several years now. Needless to say, we’re pleased to see this new product from Brinsea which will certainly help us and other hobbyists with the requirements of artificial brooding as well. For the purpose of this review, I will be taking a closer look at the Brinsea EcoGlow 20 Chick Brooder. As its name implies, the EcoGlow 20 is ideally suited for small broods of up to twenty chicks. Brinsea also offers the EcoGlow 50 Chick Brooder for larger broods. Both the EcoGlow 20 and EcoGlow 50 Chick Brooder models can be purchased online directly from Brinsea.com.
Those familar with Brinsea products will immediate recognize the signature yellow and black color scheme that charaterizes Brinsea’s well-known incubator line-up. On further inspection, however, it becomes obvious that the EcoGlow 20 represents an innovation in artificial brooding technology. As anyone who has raised chicks by hand knows, providing warmth to young birds during their first weeks of life is one of the most fundamental aspects of rearing newly-hatched chicks. Under normal circumstances, the mother hen provides vital warmth to her young via her own body heat during those first few critical weeks of life until the chick is fully feathered. In other words, nature has provided for the warmth and protection of young chicks in the form of their dutiful mother hen. Unfortunately, this is not the case when hatching and rearing a brood of chicks artificially. Without a mother hen, an alternative source of warmth must by provided for the chicks by the poultry-keeper. Traditionally, this has been accomplished by confining the young birds to small area and suspending an infrared heat lamp directly above that space. However, the EcoGlow appliance has no infrared heat bulb. Instead, the EcoGlow 20 uses radiant heat emitting from the underside of the appliance to keep chicks warm. The heat source istelf is a metal plate covered with a black teflon-like material. In essence, the warm underside of the EcoGlow imitates the warmth associated with the underside of a brooding hen. And so again, the EcoGlow 20 represents a significant innovation over traditional heat lamps.
The traditional heat lamp brooder set-up hasn’t change much through the years. In fact, it’s the same method many of our grandparents used to brood chicks, as do most poultry hobbyists today. It’s simple and it works; the heat lamp generates heat and the chicks stay warm. Be that as it may, the traditional infrared heat lamp brooding method has inherent disadvantages to the Brinsea EcoGlow. For instance, infrared heat lamps are inefficient and characterized by unreasonably high energy consumption. Be aware that the typical infrared bulb runs at about 250 watts compared to 18 watts for the Brinsea EcoGlow. In the brooder environment, traditional heat lamps must remain on continuously for weeks on end. In other words, the energy cost associated with artificially brooding chicks can quickly add up when using a traditional heat lamp for brooding. Furthermore, heat lamps get extremely hot during use, which again is 24 hours a day during chick brooding. This should not be underestimated; heat lamps put off a great deal of heat and can cause serious burns if accidentally touched. As a result, small children should not be permitted to remain unsupervised in an area where a heat lamp is set up for the purpose of brooding chicks. Unfortunately, the safety concerns associated with traditional heat lamps often prevents children from fully enjoying the wonderful experience of artificial chick brooding.
Another inherent disadvantage of infrared heat lamps involves the unnatural light they give off. Bright artificial lights are known to induce aggression and pecking behavior in chicks, hence many poultry-keepers use red heat lamps. And while a red light bulb does provide the source of heat necessary for brooding, the chick’s eyes never get a reprieve from the unnatural light emitted by the bulb itself. Remember: chicks require warmth to survive and for healthy growth, not 24 hours of glaring artificial light. Lastly, considering that the heat lamp is usually suspended above absorbent chick bedding, such as wood shavings, there is always the potential risk of fire associated with the use of infrared heat lamp brooders. In the past, chicks were often brooded in outdoor pens or brooder areas within a larger chicken shed. The risk of fire still existed but was often limited to the outdoor chicken shed, not the home. As the backyard poultry hobby has grown in recent years, more and more people are rearing chicks inside their homes, whether that be in the workshop, the garage, or even the actual living space. As a result, the risk of home fire associated with heat lamp brooders has become more likely.
With those factors in mind, the Brinsea EcoGlow 20 Chick Brooder offers several important advantages to the poultry hobbyist when compared to traditional infrared heat lamp brooders. To begin with, the Brinsea EcoGlow 20 Chick Brooder uses only 18 watts of electricity to operate in contrast to 250 watts for traditional infrared head lamps. In other words, the Brinsea EcoGlow 20 uses only a tenth of the electricity necessary to operate a traditional heat lamp. For the energy-conscious poultry keeper, using the EcoGlow 20 as an alternative to a heat lamp is an economical investment that adds up to significant energy cost savings over time. Furthermore, the Brinsea EcoGlow Chick Brooder does not rely on a standard or infrared light bulb to generate heat. As such, chicks are not exposed to excess artificial light and can developed according to natural light schedules of day and night provided the chick brooder is set up in a room with a draft-free window. Another important advantage of the Brinsea EcoGlow is that it produces no excess heat other than what is needed to warm the chicks through direct contact with the warming surface of the element. In other words, the EcoGlow is no warmer than the underside of a hen. You can essentially leave the EcoGlow running for weeks; it remains comfortable to the touch, but never hot. Even the warming under-surface of the EcoGlow, the radiant heat source, is never hot to the touch. Because the Brinsea EcoGlow produces no excess heat; there is essentially no risk of contact burns nor fire hazard associated with its use. As such, the Brinsea EcoGlow offers a significant safety advantage over traditional heat lamps, making it ideal for poultry hobbyists, children, and the teacher-classroom learning environment.
In addition to the EcoGlow 20 and EcoGlow 50, Brinsea also manufactures the popular Mini and Octagon series incubators. To purchase any product manufactured by Brinsea including the EcoGlow Chick Brooder or to learn more about other quality avian products by Brinsea, simply visit Brinsea.com today. If you’ve used the Brinsea EcoGlow Chick Brooder with success and would like to share your experience with others, please feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, visit our blog regularly for future product reviews and articles of interest to the avian breeder and poultry hobbyist.
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The day after adding my mandarins to their new pen I saw my white mandarin pair breeding in the pond. This was actually the first time I had seen this behavior, and it confirmed my suspicion that my two white mandarins had paired up. For those unfamiliar with this breed, mandarin ducks typically form pair bonds that are reestablished year after year. My white mandarin drake was the last bird added to my mandarin flock and was initially shunned by the white hen. However, the two birds have since bonded. They are almost always seen next to one another whether perching together on a branch or basking in the sun next to one another. Needless to say, I am pleased that these two have paired up. My plan is to eventually build an additional pen for each mandarin pair. This way each pair will be able to have a secure and private home in which to breed and rear their young. This will also eliminate quarrels between mandarin drakes, which tend to increase during the breeding season. During the non-breeding season I will then put all the mandarins back together in a communal pen. Doing so will imitate wild mandarin behavior as the birds generally pair up together during the breeding season, then flock together during the colder months.


