When I get new chicks, I usually try to do it in the shoulder seasons of spring and fall--when I'm not running the wood stove or the small AC unit I have. Sometimes cold weather comes early.
This year, I have some chicks that arrived a few weeks ago, and they are just about ready to go outside (they could actually go out now, but I'm still working on the coop I want to put them in--no rush, plenty of time).
So I have used the wood stove a couple of times. The chicks brood in a metal stock tank about three feet from the stove. To avoid dry-roasting them, I have found that a simple workaround is to front the tank with cardboard boxes.
The temperature on the stove side of the boxes can get to 120 F or so, but the inside wall of the stock tank stays a serene 76 or so. This may seem to be reckless, but it actually works very well--and it is a rare event (although if I had chicks in colder months, it would be more common). I have only had to run the stove with chicks in the house one other time.
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