The Dangers of heat lamps

We almost had a tragedy on the farm Thursday. I was at work when I received a call from Kyle. Apparently, he came home from work for lunch and caught that one of our broody boxes caught fire! Luckily, he caught it early, so there was minimal damage.

If you read on blog posts, you will find every winter someone warning you of the dangers of heat lamps, and that someone burned down their coop. I always took these with a grain of salt. We always keep our lamps clamped up, away from anything flammable, like the walls and tinder. How could it possibly catch fire?

Well, in our case the clamp itself broke. In the lamp, there are 3 parts, the clip that lets you mount it, the tightening clamp that goes around the bulb to attach it to the clip, and the hood and bulb apparatus. On ours, the clamps failed, causing the hood and bulb to fall right into the shavings in the floor of the box.

Thankfully, the lot for the chicks was open, so no-one was harmed. There was a lot of singed shavings and a small hole burned into the back of the box, but that was it.

Catastrophe avoided, and now we may start looking into other heating methods.