Discussion: Where do you put your brooder, and why?

[Kabootar]

My boyfriend and I recently bought a home with an acre of land and I've been dying to get started on chickens for a year or two now. We're at odds on where to put them while in the brooder. I know there isn't a "wrong" place to put it as long as the chicks are comfortable and have the appropriate temperatures they need, but I am wondering where all of you place your brooders! Garage, porch, utility room? Living room? Lol.

Also, if anyone has any opinions on non-flighty, friendly, decent layers I am open to suggestions! I am strongly favoring Buff Orpingtons right now

That's actually a nice question on which I have never given much thought about. I hatch my layer chicks under broody hens. However I do buy Cornish cross chicks for meat. I brood them in a sectioned off part of the coop where they spend rest of their short life. I do it perhaps for convenience sake. I can't think of anyother reason.

I keep atleast 24 different breeds of chicken. I highly recommend Rhode Island Red breed as your first flock.
Rhode Island Reds are synonymous with backyard chicken keeping and one of the most popular chicken breeds around.
They are friendly, easy to keep and very tough. Should produce upwards of 250, medium-sized, brown eggs per year.
Other breed that I would suggest is Barred Rock. Should produce 200, medium sized, brown eggs per year- they also lay during the winter. They are a very active bird who performs best as free-range and would make a perfect backyard chicken. They are also extremely friendly with humans so great if you want to train them to eat from your hand!

I personally don't like Orpingtons. They are bulky, food conversion ratio is low, not very active, they are vulnerable to predation, they can be very broody. However they are certainly not the worst breed that you can have, they sure look good.

 

[jspeese]

As for calm, non-flighty breeds, I think the medium-to large breeds like most breeds in the American (New Hampshire Red, Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, etc.), British (Orpington, Sussex, Australorp, etc.) and Asian (Cochin, Brahma, etc.) classes are a good bet. Do you plan to raise your own chicks? If so you might want to consider a naturally broody breed as well. If you want the most efficient egg production, then the sex-linked hybrids are a good choice. However, the sex-linked hybrids are designed for commercial production and tend to burn out after two years. Nor are they typically as hardy as the heritage breeds. So they may not be the best choice if your birds are also to be pets.

 

[TinaMarieofFL]

My boyfriend and I recently bought a home with an acre of land and I've been dying to get started on chickens for a year or two now. We're at odds on where to put them while in the brooder. I know there isn't a "wrong" place to put it as long as the chicks are comfortable and have the appropriate temperatures they need, but I am wondering where all of you place your brooders! Garage, porch, utility room? Living room? Lol.

Also, if anyone has any opinions on non-flighty, friendly, decent layers I am open to suggestions! I am strongly favoring Buff Orpingtons right now

I had mine on an enclosed Florida room. Got them in February and put them out in the coop in June.

 

[CalBickieMomma]

Mine get to live in the laundry sink until they are too big for that . Last time I had Littles, a friend let me borrow her big plastic livestock trough until they were old enough to go outside (those work great, if you want to make the investment, though I think most of them run between $60 and $100). This year, I went to Walmart and bought one of those big storage bins and had them in there for a while (and now it's the storage bin to hold their heat lamp, feeder/water dispenser, towels and mini blankets I made for them by cutting up scrap fleece and the like. That way, when I'm ready to raise the babies myself again, everything will be in one place ). I keep the bin in the kitchen on the floor, since the dogs live in the garage and the car is always coming in and out. The laundry room would be a good place, too, but it all depends on how ''clean'' you want to keep your home (we have inside birds and live near sand dunes, so dirt is a constant factor ).

I'm also that chicken momma who gets paranoid about all the terrible things that could happen to them outside - even though their coop and run is almost as secure as Fort Knox - so when they were big enough to go out during the day, I'd transport them in and out morning and night with a pet carrier.

I think it all depends on how many you plan on getting and how long you plan to keep them inside. If you want to keep them inside longer just to be on the safe side, bigger is always better so they have plenty of room to grow.

 

[Harmony Fowl]

Initially, I keep chicks in a rabbit cage in a spare room inside the house. A closed door keeps the resident cats and dogs away and then I can actually keep that room a little warmer so there's less chance of silly newborns wandering away from the heat plate and getting chilled.

At 7-10 days, once I know everyone is thriving, I put them outside in a brooder we built. It's inside our chicken run, though not actually inside the coop. It is under cover and protected from the rain. It helps with integration with the flock later. That's not a concern now for your first chickens, but you'd be surprised (or maybe not) at how many people wind up with a second set before their first is even grown. Being in the run, behind both a physical and an electric fence, it's just lumber and chicken wire. I have raised chicks in it at all times of year, but now make a strong attempt to have chicks out there only when the heat plate (rated down to 50 degrees) can effectively keep them warm.

During the first week, I keep them on paper towels, then they're outside. The dust I was always dealing with when I kept them inside longer is non-existent.

 

[pamiejune]

Gee, no one else broods their chicks in the kitchen?!? My mom did - 25 layer chicks every two years, and I put out my 13 Speckled Sussex (who were growing like crazy - you could practically watch them get bigger by the hour!) and 6 banties (who were so tiny but fully fledged) in their coops not long ago. My kitchen is huge, 19' x 30', so it was easy to find spots for the brooder tubs away from food preparation/eating sites, then large cardboard boxes I had thankfully saved when I recently bought some furniture. Hardware cloth tops to keep the cats out; only one was interested, but I wasn't taking any chances. Dust wasn't too bad; I used low-dust pine shavings which may have helped. The smell wasn't bad either, as we keep windows open a lot and I kept up with changing out the shavings. We LOVED having them close by, especially my 7 yo granddaughter who lives with me. They are very tame now because of all the attention they got.

 

[allanb]

We kept our first set of chicks in the garage. The second time we kept them in the garage, in a tote. Once they were too big for the tote we moved them outside, under a covered patio, in a raised brooder we built. We decided to move them out due to amount of dust they create that gets on everything.

 

[Mtnboomer]

I hatched our first set this past winter. I used a 75 gal aquarium in our bsmt. They stayed in that for about 5 wks. In early spring, i built a 3x5' brooder in the garage and kept them there another 6wks. Then I added a small coop to our duck pen and added the chicks to it until they were 4 mos old. After 4mos they joined our free range flock.
Reason for all the hassle was a combo of temp and our flock is made up of 10-13lb Brahmas so there was a safety concern

 

[jeepgirl13]

Yes, my boyfriend was trying to convince me to keep them in a small room in the middle of the house, or a small bathroom. I am thinking a small, insulated room in the garage that is just steps from the house, because of the dust and smell like you mention! I mean, they are gonna be our pets, but they are still barn animals/livestock! And good to know about the coop. Maybe we'll start on that this week and order the chicks next week if we've made good progress.

I keep mine in the garage in a big metal horse trough during the milder seasons. Here's a pic of my current hatch right now. Waiting on more to get out of their eggs. During the winter they go in the back room of the house that leads to the back yard. Keeps them away from the main part of the household, but ou of my freezing garage in the winter

 

[springvalley123]

I tried taking this group I have now (hatched 8/14) straight from the post office to outside, but I've had some temps above 100 F, and in spite of my best efforts I couldn't keep the coop cool enough. I lost three! I feel bad, I'm sure I'd have lost one or zero if I put them in the bathtub as usual for post office birds (vs TSC birds which are about 5 days old by the time I get them). But I was trying to make our house more livable, less disruptive and shield a vulnerable person (not a child) from possible losses, so opted for the coop. Never again! They're in the tub now, and will be for at least a week. Normally I'd have kept them in the bathtub until they were 7 days old, then to the coop, and this worked two years ago in a hotter area than I'm living now but they got such a rough start I'm keeping them in until at least age 14 days, possibly longer depending on weather forecast, how they're doing etc.