My Home Made Brooder!!
After having my 15 babies in smaller brooder for about 4 weeks I decided they needed more room. I had looked at tons of pictures so I had an idea of what I wanted. Hubby was at work and I got a wild hair to do it myself. Believe it or not the only thing I had help with was putting the hardware cloth on there and my hubby had to resize the doors since after I built them they wouldn't fit!! =) It's 7' long 3' high 3' wide and stands a total of 5' tall and is heavy as all get out! Since I took these pictures I added a tin roof on it. It works great for when I have little babies too! I use the shelf liner rubber stuff and put shavings on top of that! (Pic below) but found after a while those things just got too nasty and I started using newspaper as a base and have the shavings on top of that!! I also put a seperator in there by taking the really small wire hardware cloth and zip tying it to the side to be able to put 2 different age groups in there!
As far as the direction for how is was made, I really didn't have any directions just an idea in my head and I just kinda of went for it.
The only thing that I'm going to change (well add really) is a poop catcher!! I've figured it out in my head but haven't quite got a chance to make it yet. It's basically going to be a piece of plywood with 4 sides nailed a foot or so underneath with a little hinged door that folds down. That way I can put a bunch of kitty litter down to help dry the poop out and I can clean it daily with a litter scoop but when it's time to intergrate the flock I can totally clean it out by scraping everything in a garbage can!! Well, like I said it's still in my head so we'll see!! =)
(I forgot to add that other than the hardware cloth, hinges & latches that I bought new everything else was recycled, so it cost about $45.00 to build!)
