After having raised Cornish Cross for the past 5 years my wife and I decided that we felt comfortable enough to start raising more so we could sell pastured chicken(Salatin style) to our little community. My brooder designs have improved from year to year but one thing that always bothered me was the feeling that the chicks were outgrowing the brooder before I felt comfortable putting them out to pasture. On top of that we have been getting a large number of requests for eggs as we were advertising our meat birds. So this year I decided to really go big. We see the potential to need space for possibly 300-400 chicks at a time within the next year so I built the brooder house 10 x 20 with a partition in the middle making 2 10x10 brooders.
I also have two 36"x42" brooder boxes that can be inserted where ever needed to handle day olds for a few days until I feel comfortable moving them to the full side. The walls are 32" high and the roof is broken up into four panels that are hinged to allow for easy access and increased ventilation on those hot south louisiana afternoons. As you can see in the pics there is a 3" vent that runs along the sides with gable vent on both ends. There is also a ridge vent.
While I was building it the laying hens decided that I must be building this for them and two of them immediately started nesting in one side and both layed an egg while I was cutting and screwing the roof on. So I cut the aluminum a little short to make a door and gave them some places to nest. Since the pictures I've covered their side with about 4" of hay.
This batch is a straight run of aprox. 60 heavy breed layers. I will be going through this weekend to remove the cockrels and bring them to the poultry sale at our feed store. The cornish are already in their tractor in the yard. These guys seemed to love their new space!.
I wanted to post this 1.) so I could show off a little
. and 2.) I need a few more sets of eyes on it to see if there is anything that I may have missed or improvements that need to be made.
I also have two 36"x42" brooder boxes that can be inserted where ever needed to handle day olds for a few days until I feel comfortable moving them to the full side. The walls are 32" high and the roof is broken up into four panels that are hinged to allow for easy access and increased ventilation on those hot south louisiana afternoons. As you can see in the pics there is a 3" vent that runs along the sides with gable vent on both ends. There is also a ridge vent.
While I was building it the laying hens decided that I must be building this for them and two of them immediately started nesting in one side and both layed an egg while I was cutting and screwing the roof on. So I cut the aluminum a little short to make a door and gave them some places to nest. Since the pictures I've covered their side with about 4" of hay.
This batch is a straight run of aprox. 60 heavy breed layers. I will be going through this weekend to remove the cockrels and bring them to the poultry sale at our feed store. The cornish are already in their tractor in the yard. These guys seemed to love their new space!.
I wanted to post this 1.) so I could show off a little