Ok, I am raising cornish chicks right now for their own coop. The plan is to take their eggs and hatch them out and raise my own meat birds from scratch instead of buying them as chicks. I am using a large cardboard box for a brooder and it works fine, but the heat lamp running in my garage makes working in my garage intolerable. They are two weeks old now so the temp is starting to drop but the garage is still too hot in the summer to do anything and I want my garage back.
So my idea is to make a semi enclosed brooder. Maybe a sliding plexiglass window with hardware cloth on the inside to adjust it. Mostly enclosed but maybe a window on each side for air flow. I thought of using an inkbird ITC-1000 controller and have that trigger a relay. Hot wire on Common, Normally open to the heater lamp and Normally closed to a LED low glow light or a night light so the birds can see. The controller would on and off the heat lamp as needed and I can set the temp to whatever that week requires. Then most of the heat is contained inside with the birds. Windows would be lower to allow trapped heat to stay in the brooder.
Anyone seen anything like this built?
So my idea is to make a semi enclosed brooder. Maybe a sliding plexiglass window with hardware cloth on the inside to adjust it. Mostly enclosed but maybe a window on each side for air flow. I thought of using an inkbird ITC-1000 controller and have that trigger a relay. Hot wire on Common, Normally open to the heater lamp and Normally closed to a LED low glow light or a night light so the birds can see. The controller would on and off the heat lamp as needed and I can set the temp to whatever that week requires. Then most of the heat is contained inside with the birds. Windows would be lower to allow trapped heat to stay in the brooder.
Anyone seen anything like this built?
