Can a cardboard box be a 6 week long brooder? - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragerkid2 


I saw that and loved the idea, that's why I posted this. I was just wondering if I should get a couple boxes I case they do go bad.

We had the left over from moving. But honistly you can pick up large boxes for cheap at home improvement stores. We pull out the used litter and lay a layer of boxes over the bottom. We just pull it up and fold and out to a burn pile it goes ;)

my chicks are 4 wks old.  they're always pushing the envelope, reaching for a bigger environment.  mine are in a coop (sole occupants which i know is not frequently the case).  i let them out in a small corral twice a day.  they're exploring, learning, always trying to figure out how to get out.  when i open their pop door for their 30 min yard time twice a day, they are clammering at the door.  when it opens they fall out in their push to get out.  i've got to get a top on their run asap so they can have some real time outside - they want it so bad.  i can't sit there all the time being their guard dog. 

well that's my delima with my chickies.

good luck with your little ones

Every group of chicks I've taken care of has gone into foreclosure on their cardboard box home well before six weeks of age.

However, my Cardboard Box Bankers are generous!!  The peeping, communicating warm-fuzzies get a new mortgage underwritten as they get larger and have daily mishaps like water spills....

A local liquor store and a household furnishing store have financed many fine chick homes!

As they get larger, duct-taping a couple of boxes together helps!

I am wondering how old they can be when I can put them outside??  

I was hoping around 5- 6 weeks, which puts me at the middle of April.  IS that too young??  What if we put the heating lamp out there in the coop with them?  Then they can be outside for the most part, enojy it and be in the voop with the light in the coop.

That is too young??!!?

My best brooder was an old kiddie pool that we used for the dogs in the summer. I added a wall of cardboard boxes around the outside like a ring---fastened with duct tape and also with some furniture pushed up against the cardboard to keep it in place. Had to be careful that there was no gap that a chick could get wedged between the kiddie pool lip and the cardboard ring. 

The cardboard ring was to add height since those little buggers could jump amazingly high (should've known then that they'd grow to become hens who fly out of their run every day!)

I did sawdust in the bottom and scooped out soiled places as needed. Very easy to take the pool outside and hose it down when finished with it. 

I'd be leary about just using a cardboard box by itself because the bottom will get soaked very quickly. My chicks constantly spilled their waterer no matter how many variations I tried and they poop like crazy. Even if you put a tarp under the box to protect your floor the bottom of the cardboard will be a nasty, soggy mess in less than a week.