Brooder tips and tricks?

[Kinzer]

I’m new to this and still plenty to learn. I just wanted to get some input from BYC community to see what I can improve on to keep these chicks happy and healthy. Here are a couple of pictures of my indoor brooder. The brooder is 2’x4’. I’ve got a dish of fairly coarse sand, a couple of roosting areas 12” off the ground, and obviously my heat lamp, food, and water. The bedding is large flake low dust pine shavings from Tractor Supply. I’ve got my water and food elevated off the shaving floor because they were getting so many shavings in both of them. They all seem very happy, but I want to be sure it stays that way. Any thoughts on improvement from your experience? How do you keep the bedding out of the water and feed? Other things to keep the chicks entertained? When to move them out to the coop (they are 2 and 3 weeks old now)? Other thoughts? Thank you so much in advance.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

They will probably need more room in the next week or two. If it's warm enough they can go outside during the day.

Moving them out permanently can depend on your coop, and your climate.

 

[Kinzer]

They will probably need more room in the next week or two. If it's warm enough they can go outside during the day.

Moving them out permanently can depend on your coop, and your climate.

It should be around a high of 80 to 85 and a low of maybe 55 to 60. Do you think they would still need a heat lamp at that point outside in a coop? The youngest ones would be about 4 or 5 weeks old. Coop will be about 4’x7’.

 

[TheCopperCoop]

In regards to the food and water, especially the water, we used 2x4 block and then eventually an overturned dog dish to act as a little table to set the water up on. It worked out pretty well. We tried using nipple and cup waterers but they kept malfunctioning and the chicks never seemed satisfied.

As far as when to move them. You could probably get away with moving them outside then especially if you can give them a week or so off heat indoors. We put out chicks out at 6 weeks old in early April here in Montana. Night time temps were in the 30s and they had been off heat for ~1 1/2 weeks prior in a garage that was around the low 60s temp wise.

They were all mostly feathered, but one was still little downy I figured she would be fine cuddling in with the rest. The first few nights they slept on the bedding cuddled up in the corner of the coop and then moved up onto the roosts. We had no issues. We're expecting another batch of chicks this week and we're hoping to start bringing them outside closer to 4 weeks since it will be warmer, but we'll play it by ear.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

It should be around a high of 80 to 85 and a low of maybe 55 to 60. Do you think they would still need a heat lamp at that point outside in a coop? The youngest ones would be about 4 or 5 weeks old. Coop will be about 4’x7’.

They will pile at night to keep warm. As stated by @TheCopperCoop , as long as they are weaned off the heat they will be okay. You can move the lamp and run it at night for a week or two if you wanted to.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Looks perfect. We raise chicks each spring, and our brooder looks much like yours, except we use the large opaque storage containers to control the heat a little better than a wire cage will accomplish.
We also raise them on a tabletop so that they don't have folks coming at them from above, the natural place that many of their predators come from.
At some point you'll realize that you need to get the water up off the pine shavings to keep them from filling it with shavings and droppings, but otherwise it looks great!