I am new to BYC and we are trying to decide what to use as our brooder First chicks arrive March 14th! So excited!
My brooder is a large dog crate with hardware cloth on the sides to prevent bigger girls from getting in and the chicks from getting out. The crate we use has 2 doors - one on the side and one on the front. The front door butts up against the basket nest and a board covers the gap. The side door is for my access. They can still see each other, which makes integration easier, the mess is all out in the coop instead of having all that dust and dander coating everything in the house, and I don't mess with dangerous heat lamps. You can make out the little "cave" in the top right of the picture. It's a basket with a wire frame inside. Draped over the wire frame is a heating pad, a Sunbeam extra large heating pad that allows the user to turn off the auto-shutoff feature. That's covered with straw to form the cave. The chicks run in and out as they want - in for a quick warm up and out for food, water, and exploration. I used this setup (without the heating pad, of course) when we had a broody that hatched out one egg, then we brought it indoors to help Scout, our chick who needed to be treated after his feet got frostbite, then we put it back outside when he was strong enough to go back out to the coop. I will never brood chicks in the house again!
I purchased 2 50 gal plastic totes. I'm getting 20 chicks in early March. My plan is to keep chicks in 1 tote while little, then divide the group as they get bigger. I'll need to vary the groups so they all get along! I'll put hardware cloth on the lid. I'll just have the heat lamp on the hardware cloth, it'll be safer. I also have 3 cats. When I'm done brooding, I can store them in the garage for later. I'll try to get pics tomorrow AND try to figure out how to post them!
