I need a brooder for 45 chicks I would prefer to brood them together but I have the stuff to divide them up. I have several cardboard boxes but if I use them wont they breed bacteria? How big does the space have to be to house 45 chicks for 8 weeks? I would like to use a rubbermaid but they appear to be big enough for half the amount of chicks. What are your suggestions and advice? Thanks BarredBuff
I would do a search for brooders, I've seen some great brooders on this site! I've see some that are card board boxes duc taped together and look great.......I've used card board boxes in the past as well. As long as your keeping thier poop cleaned up, there shouldn't be any problems. Good luck, sounds like loads of fun with 45 chicks!
I don't think I'd use the same cardboard box(es) for 8 weeks. I had my four chicks in one for just two weeks, and they managed to spread poo all the way up the walls and get it utterly filthy! Also you'll probably be surprised by how fast they grow. 45 day-old chicks might fit in a couple of boxes just fine, but wait till they're four weeks old, they'll be bursting out of them like battery hens. I shifted my four into a 4' x 2' plywood brooder when they were two weeks old and now they're at five weeks I think they're starting to look a bit cramped.
I suppose it all depends how far up your list of priorities you're placing animal welfare. If it comes in below expense and the inconvenience of making a huge brooder, I'm sure it wouldn't do too much harm to have the chicks crowded in together for a few weeks. If you can give them more room, I'm sure they'd develop better though. And the larger the brooder is, the less often it'll need cleaned out too. When mine were in a carbboard box, I was changing their paper towels about five times a day...
Other points: If you start off with a very big brooder, make sure you put up temporary walls of cardboard in a rough circle to keep the chicks from wandering too far away from the heat lamp. The circle is because they sometimes bunch up in corners and either get stuck there or crush the ones on the bottom. Maybe splitting them all up for a couple of weeks would be a good thing, as having fewer chicks in each box will reduce the risk of anyone getting crushed.
Here are pics of what I did. I had made a brooder from the largest Rubbermaid tote I could find but thought I would need more room for my current hatch. I just got another tote and connected it to the first with a clear plastic storage box. Both totes have lids and heat lamps so I can also use them separately if I want. My husband calls it "chicken tv - widescreen version".
Uuh. 45 chicks??? I think that no matter what you put them in, they will be busting out of it by 3 weeks! We only had 12 chicks in a HUGE cardboard box and we couldn't keep them in it beyond 5 weeks. We had to move them outside to the coop.
Right now, I am expecting about 15 chicks and we bought (at a yard sale) a wardrobe box to make a brooder for them. They just don't stay little. Once they are 3 or 4 weeks, their jumping, roosting, running and flapping behaviors are pretty big!
When our broody hatched our little ones last year, she had them in the coop with the rest of the flock by 3 weeks of age. And it was so much better for them to be able to roam around and play and explore. It has made me think a little differently about new chicks.
With our bator babies, it is different, I realize that. But 45 chicks??? Wow. Good luck with that!
I think I would be thinking in terms of moving them to a much bigger and outside-if-possible type of enclosure in about 4 weeks.
I think I have to go with gckiddhouse on this one. 45 chicks is an awfully large number of chicks to brood indoors. They may be little now, but oh lordy! In about 2-3 weeks, you're going to really wish you had a facility for them someplace other than in your home!
If your climate is such that you can put them out to a coop at 4 weeks of age, I'd highly recommend it. We started out with 12 in our original flock as day old's. They quickly outgrew their brooder cage in less than three weeks, and it was a large rabbit type of cage. Thank heavens we had the coop done before we ever bought them. I'm not sure what we would have done other wise.
If you're trying to save money, (and let's face it, who isn't these days?) you could go the cardboard box route for the first couple of weeks. If you plan to go beyond that time frame with cardboard boxes, my best recommendation is to keep a good supply of them on hand. Chicks have a penchant for turning over water dishes, pooping, all sort of crazy antics that can cause a horrendous mess in pretty short order. Your concern isn't going to be so much of providing a breeding ground for disease as just keeping the structural integrity of the boxes intact. Water has a nasty habit of making even the stoutest of cardboard nothing more than flimsy gauze in no time at all! And then the next thing you know, you'll have chicks running hither, thither and yon!
You haven't mentioned in either of your posts as to what your space allowances are here. Do you have a heated garage at home? If so, my best recommendation would be to get your hands on some scrap lumber and build a goodly sized enclosure for them in the garage. Something on the order of about 2 foot by 4-6 foot long and about 18 inches deep. A bottom for it isn't all that necessary if you're setting this on concrete, other than from a "cold floor" aspect. You'll need to put something down, (shavings, newspaper, paper towels, etc) to keep them off of the bare concrete as it would likely be too cold for them early on. And early on, you can certainly keep them indoors in a big cardboard box. This idea is more for when they're growing by leaps and bounds and are too big for the box any longer, but still too young to go outside.
If you do make such a large enclosure inside someplace, I would certainly heed the advice of Gypsy07 and partition it off into several sections, with a brooder light or heat source for each. There will be plenty of time later on to bring the whole flock together when they are older and stronger.
I hope some of that advice helps. 45 chicks!!
WOW!! You're a braver soul than I!!!
Good luck and let us know how the new flock progresses. Hopefully they will all thrive and live a long and productive life for you!
