Here is my DIY Homemade Chicken Brooder Setup

bruceha2000 said:

For @Blooie
The area of a circle 3' in diameter is 7.1 square feet. Which sounds kinda weird since it is round

Looks like you have the light wired up real tight. Good plan if you are going to use a heat lamp. Too many fires caused by a lamp falling. Still somewhat dangerous though given you have cats that might be bouncing around on the top of the brooder. I would aim it at the opposite floor/wall joint. If you look at your video (I'm sure you have a lot when reviewing to post

) you can see how there is at least some less bright area when you tilted the light to take the cover off. Chicks do way better if they aren't in light 24x7.

My first dozen chicks (June 2012) outgrew their bathtub by 3 weeks. They were flying out of it at 2 weeks, of course they couldn't fly back in from the floor! The floor of the bathroom had to be covered with newspaper. It was hotter than hades in that bathroom with the heat lamp set per the "they say" temperature "requirements". If the coop were done by the time they hit 2 weeks, they would have been out in it.

I don't know where you live (you can put it in your profile) so I don't know what sort of outside temps you have right now. I ASSUME you will have electricity in the coop since the birds will need supplemental heat (hen, Mama heating pad [HIGHLY recommended! As "natural" as you can get shy of a brooding hen] or a heat lamp) until they are fully feathered. Since these are your first chicks, you don't even need to make a brooder space in the new coop (nice size!), just put them in. You will find that they can fly up 2' by 2 weeks of age.

Now as to the 24x7 heat requirement of "95F the first week, 90F the second week, etc". Bull hockey. Maybe they do that with thousands of chicks at big hatcheries but it isn't necessary for we "small fry" chick raisers no matter what you read. And it is as far from "normal" as you can get. They need to be able to get to a warm spot WHEN they need to warm back up or sleep but they DO NOT need to be heated to those temps 24x7.

Here is a picture of my June 2015 chicks raised by a 2012 broody hen in the coop. They were in a MHP cave in a box in our bedroom for 1.5 days before they were stuffed under the hen at o'dark thirty. Chicks raised in a MHP cave brooder sleep at night and are much quieter during the day than heat lamp raised chicks. The brooder space is about 2'x6'. There is a 2x4 wire fence top to keep the older girls out (removed for the photos). The daytime temps may have hit 75F, colder at night. These 7 girls are five days old. Note how they are NOT in 95F temps, not even close and not all crammed under the hen. They slept under her wings at night and went under to warm up during the day when they wanted to. One thing for sure, they spent WAY more time NOT under the hen during the day than they spent under her. I would suggest you look through the MHP thread @Beekissed linked. Easy to build and much safer than a heat lamp. Whatever you use in your big coop, the chicks will have plenty of chance to stay closer to the heat or farther from it.





Fantastic post. I really appreciate your time in response. My chicks are doing so good. The are 9 days old now and have tripled in size. They are definitely at the limit of this brooder. They will have a new home soon. I may tuck them into my greenhouse for a few days. Regardless, the round little brooder I built served its purpose. Ill use it as first start chamber for new babies.

Here are the chicks at day 9.

Click to expand...