Newly hatched chicks need a brooder temperature of 90 to 95°F during their first week of life, then 5°F less each week until they’re fully feathered around six weeks old. Getting this schedule right is one of the most important things you can do when raising chicks, because they can’t regulate their own body temperature for the first several weeks.
Week-by-Week Temperature Guide
The rule is simple: start at 90 to 95°F, then drop 5 degrees each week. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Week 1 (days 1–7): 90–95°F
- Week 2 (days 8–14): 85–90°F
- Week 3 (days 15–21): 80–85°F
- Week 4 (days 22–28): 75–80°F
- Week 5 (days 29–35): 70–75°F
- Week 6 (days 36–42): 65–70°F
Once the brooder temperature matches the ambient temperature in your coop or home (generally around 65 to 70°F), you can remove the heat source entirely. Most chicks reach this point between five and six weeks old, depending on the season and where you live.
Where to Measure the Temperature
Place your thermometer a couple of inches from the floor of the brooder, right at chick height. A reading taken higher up or off to the side won’t reflect what the chicks are actually experiencing. Position it near the heat source but not directly under the hottest spot, since the goal is to create a gradient: warm on one end, cooler on the other. This lets chicks move toward or away from the heat as they need.
Let the Chicks Tell You What They Need
A thermometer gives you a starting point, but the chicks themselves are the best indicator of whether the temperature is right. Watch how they move around the brooder.
If they’re too cold, they’ll huddle tightly together directly under the heat source. Prolonged chilling stresses their bodies, stunts growth, and increases mortality. If they’re too hot, they’ll pant, hold their wings away from their bodies, and press against the walls of the brooder trying to escape the heat. Overheating causes stress and can lead to pasty butt, a potentially fatal condition where droppings clog the vent.
When the temperature is just right, chicks spread out evenly across the brooder, pecking around contentedly. Some will be near the heat, some farther away, and they’ll move freely between the two zones. That relaxed, dispersed activity is exactly what you want to see.
Heat Lamps vs. Radiant Heat Plates
The two most common heat sources are traditional 250-watt heat lamps and radiant heat plates. They both work, but they carry very different risks.
Heat lamps are inexpensive and widely available, but running a 250-watt bulb around the clock over flammable bedding is a leading cause of coop and barn fires. They also blast light 24 hours a day, which disrupts the chicks’ natural sleep cycle. Because they heat from above and warm a broad area, it’s easy to overheat the entire brooder if the lamp is positioned too low or the space is too small.
Radiant heat plates sit just above the chicks and mimic a mother hen’s body. They use only 12 to 18 watts, produce no light, and eliminate fire risk almost entirely. Chicks duck underneath to warm up and wander away when they’ve had enough, which closely mirrors how they’d behave under a broody hen. The tradeoff is a higher upfront cost, and they only warm chicks that are directly beneath them rather than heating the surrounding air.
If you use a radiant heat plate, you won’t get a meaningful reading from a thermometer placed in the open brooder. Instead, rely entirely on chick behavior to judge whether the plate height needs adjusting.
How a Mother Hen Compares
A broody hen maintains roughly 99.5°F against the eggs during incubation and continues to brood her chicks after hatching, letting them duck under her feathers to warm up and venture out to eat and explore. The chicks self-regulate by moving in and out. This is exactly the principle behind radiant heat plates, and it’s why creating a temperature gradient in your brooder matters more than hitting one precise number everywhere.
Moving Chicks Outside
By six weeks old, most chicks are fully feathered and ready to transition to an outdoor coop, provided the outside temperature is at least 50°F. Cold-hardy breeds like Plymouth Rocks and Orpingtons can tolerate temperatures down into the 40s at this age. If your chicks have been in a warm indoor space, give them a few days to acclimate before leaving them outside full time. You can do this by increasing their outdoor time gradually or by moving them to the coop during a mild stretch of weather.
Even after the brooder heat is gone, chicks won’t develop their full adult plumage until around 11 weeks old. During that in-between period, they handle cool weather well but can still be vulnerable to sudden cold snaps, heavy rain, or persistent drafts. A dry, windproof coop with good bedding is usually all the protection they need.
Common Mistakes That Cause Problems
The biggest temperature mistake isn’t picking the wrong number on a chart. It’s failing to adjust as the chicks grow. A brooder that was perfect on day one can become dangerously hot by day ten if you haven’t raised the lamp or lowered the plate. Check chick behavior at least twice a day and adjust accordingly.
Another frequent issue is heating the entire brooder to one uniform temperature with no cooler zone for chicks to retreat to. If every corner of the space is 95°F, chicks that are too warm have nowhere to go. Your brooder should always have a distinct warm side and a cooler side. For heat lamps, this means positioning the lamp at one end rather than centering it. For heat plates, the surrounding space naturally stays cooler.
Skipping the thermometer altogether is risky in the first week, when chicks are most fragile. Even if you plan to rely on behavior after that, a thermometer at chick height gives you a reliable starting point while the chicks are still adjusting to their new environment.