DIY Brooder

[Chicky-bock-bock-mamma]

Good morning,
I am about to hatch out some chicks and want some easy and effective brooder ideas. Thanks for your time.

 

[Welshies]

The cardboard box method always works when brooding them indoors. When brooding outdoors I always use a dog kennel.
Personally, I use a heat lamp, but you should listen to what @Blooie does, it's genius!

 

[Blooie]

Thanks. It's not so much genius as common sense...for the strongest, healthiest chicks I've ever raised, I duplicate a mother hen as closely as possible. That means even, gentle heat, heat right at their backs, natural day/night cycles, a dark cozy place to snuggle under, someplace soft to snuggle on top of, and letting the chicks decide how much heat they need and when they need it.

I did it by the book for my first batch...heat lamp, big box, and keeping the chicks in the house so long I was beginning to resent them instead of enjoying them. I know you're supposed to wait until "warm weather" to put them out, but here that can mean snow in June. In fact, the first year I had chicks we got our last snowfall on June 6th. If I'd waited until then to put them out, I'd have practically been gathering eggs from the brooder in the office!!

So Mama Heating Pad was the way to go. I got a Sunbeam xPress Heat heating pad that had a switch to bypass the "automatic off" feature, draped it over a scrap of metal fencing bent into a cave, covered it with a towel covered in Press 'n Seal, secured the whole thing so that chicks didn't get trapped between layers, and I've never looked back. Chicks slept all night through, explored, popped underneath when they needed a quick warmup or got spooked, took cat naps on top of the "cave" surveying their domain, and they absolutely thrived! As they grew it was easy to turn the pad down an notch and/or grab the frame at the center and pull it up to make it taller.

A couple of cardboard boxes taped together make a wonderful brooder. So do wardrobe boxes from UHaul, and you can buy those relatively cheaply. Appliance boxes, wire dog crates....anything that has plenty of room for growing chicks and their "accessories" can work. Personally I don't like plastic totes....they hold in too much heat and chicks NEED areas that are cooler. I brood my chicks outdoors in a wire dog exercise pen with hardware cloth around the bottom to keep them in. That pen goes into the run, and the adults can wander around all sides of it to familiarize themselves with the chicks. The brooder has portal doors in it so that I can open them to let the babies mingle with the adults at about 3 weeks old, then I keep them open during integration.

This is a long thread, but if you are interested you can focus on just the first post because the basics never changed, and then go to the second link which explains how many of us have made one change in the original design. Now, if you are more comfortable with the conventional heat lamp, then you should do that. (But I'd far rather touch a running heating pad than a running heat lamp!) If you do use a lamp, secure it, secure it, and when you think it's secured, secure it again! Good luck with your hatch and chicks!

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/956958/mama-heating-pad-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...e-brooder-picture-heavy-update.956958/page-46

 

[Hope Hughes]

Depending on how many you hatch the cardboard box works great.
I use the MHP with a little modifications to it, i have used it on 6 hatches and works amazing!! (here is the linkhttps://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/mama-heating-pad-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update.956958/#post-14882145)
I had a big brooding box, floor made of medal and the walls of wood easy to clean and deep sided. I no longer have that here so i use a big dog crate and sometime i break it in half and attach them each side so it is longer for them.
Some poeple use tubs (i do for my quail because they are smaller and i can use a short wall tub)
If you google DIY chick brooder or search it in Pinterest ypu can get a billion different ideas. Each work best for different people and their situation.
Good luck!


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[CapricornFarm]

Here is the one i built. You can also make the legs longer if you like. I like to sit and handle the chicks.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Are you going to be brooding indoors or out of doors, maybe in a attached garage? If outside, what is your climate when they are less than a month old? About how many chicks? How often will you be brooding so we know if you need something more permanent instead of a one-off. How long do you expect them to stay in the brooder? I find it a lot easier to make meaningful suggestions if I have a bit of info to work with.

I see you just joined, welcome to the forum!

 

[Blooie]

And @Ridgerunner is way smart, too!!! I promise!

 

[Chicky-bock-bock-mamma]

Are you going to be brooding indoors or out of doors, maybe in a attached garage? If outside, what is your climate when they are less than a month old? About how many chicks? How often will you be brooding so we know if you need something more permanent instead of a one-off. How long do you expect them to stay in the brooder? I find it a lot easier to make meaningful suggestions if I have a bit of info to work with.

I see you just joined, welcome to the forum!

Thank you for helping, we live in Oregon so they will be indoor for at least the first month or two. I am going to do a couple hatches. This one is due Jan 23rd and then I have another going in the incubator on Feb 6th and then they will have to be in an brooder in doors also. When is a good time to place them outdoors? It's pretty cold here in Oregon during January and February.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How many would be good to know. But let's get some basics out of the way.

The wet side of Oregon is probably going to warmer at the end of February than the dry side though you can still have a cold snap either side. Here I normally take my chicks out of the brooder at 5 weeks but my lows seldom get below zero Fahrenheit. You might be facing colder than that. The coop I keep them in without heat has excellent ventilation up high but really good breeze protection down low where they are. I raise mine outside in a large brooder in the main coop. I keep one side pretty toasty but the far end can sometimes have ice in it. They play on that colder end more than a lot of people would expect, so they are acclimated to colder weather. I don't know what your coop looks like and raising them indoors makes it harder to acclimate them, but some people take them out into the cold during the day for short stretches to acclimate them.

If your coop is in pretty good shape for ventilation and breeze protection I'd think six weeks is about the earliest I'd suggest you take them out. That's a shame since you two hatches are going to be about five weeks apart. I'd hesitate to put just hatched chicks in with five week olds. Sometimes that works out but sometimes the older kill the younger. I'd want a separate brooder for the younger or at least the option to put them in a different brooder if you need to.

To me the ideal brooder has one spot that is warm enough in the coolest conditions and a spot cool enough in the warmest conditions. There are a lot of different ways to provide that warm spot, they all have their benefits, risks, and limitations. I use heat lamps out-of-doors but heating pads, heat plates, hovers, emitters, and other things can work very well, indoors or out. If you decide to use a heat lamp my first suggestion is to throw that clamp away so you are not tempted to rely it. Use wire to hold it in place so it cannot be knocked loose. Do not use string of plastic that can burn or melt, use wire. Indoors I assume your temperature will constantly be in the 70’s. You won’t need a 250 watt bulb, a 125 or even a 75 watt should be plenty. You won’t need any heat after three weeks. Make sure your brooder is big enough so the far end is quite a bit cooler away from the heat. That’s one of the risks of using a heat lamp, the brooder gets too warm throughout especially with a large bulb and a small brooder.

Hopefully people that use other methods to heat will tell you a bit on how to set them up and what risks to look out for.

By the time they are a couple of weeks old they can fly pretty well. Whatever type of brooder you use needs to have a top on it to keep them from flying out.


By the time they are six weeks old they will be a lot larger than when they hatch. You need to plan for that. Some people will give you square feet per chick numbers that require more space in a brooder than for full grown chickens in a coop, I won’t do that. I do believe the more space you have the better, within limits. Since you are hatching you don’t know how many of what sex you will have. By four to five weeks males need more space than females. The more chicks you have the less square feet per chick they need, to a certain point. There is a fair chance not all the eggs you set will hatch but I think that is what you should base your brooder on, hopefully you will get lucky. If you can tell us how many eggs you will set I’ll hazard a guess as to a minimum size I think you need but my experience is limited to five weeks, not six, when the brooder is kind of crowded.

When you brood chicks in the house they can be loud. That doesn’t bother some people, especially if you leave them in the dark at night when you are trying to sleep, but it can bother some people. If you don’t keep the brooder dry it can stink. It can get wet from the waterer or if you let the poop build up too thick. There are ways to manage that but you do need to manage it. One of the big complaints is that the chicks create a lot of dust. That dust can be dander from down or skin flakes coming off, hopefully no family members are allergic to chick dander. They are constantly scratching the bedding, that can turn it into dust. And if their poop gets really dry, which you want to keep the stink down, they can scratch that and turn it into dust. Lots of people brood in their bedroom, dining room, or den but you might want to consider brooding in a room you can close the door and isolate, maybe a spare bedroom. Some people use the guest bathroom and use the tub as the brooder. If you have a cat or dog you might find it beneficial to be able to lock them out, or at least make sure they cannot get into the brooder.

As for ideas about how you can build a brooder you might want to look through this very old very long thread. It shows what people have used. As you can see you are pretty much limited by your imagination. Lots of different things work.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/brooder-thread-post-pics-of-your-brooders.6233/page-350

 

[Chicky-bock-bock-mamma]

The first amount of eggs in the incubator right now is 9 confirmed embryos swimming We are at day 11 as of now. The February bunch will be 24 or more