My DH called from work and asked me to come by and look at something he thought might work as a brooder. His boss was getting rid of it and was offering it to my DH for FREE.
I like "Free"! "Free" is good! So, I drove over to his work to have a look-see. I took one look at it and said, "Free? FREE?? Heck yeah!!!!"
It was originally built for breeding finches, but I could see that I could make it work as a chick brooder. And it is going to save us a bunch of money because I was going to have my DH build a large partitioned brooder. The brooder itself is 3' tall by 6' long by 2' deep. On the stand, it is just over 5' tall. It has 1/4" heavy duty hardware cloth covering the fronts, with the left side completely covered and the right side halfway up by plexiglass to help keep out drafts. The floor is also hardware cloth with drop-down hinged plywood bottoms for cleaning. I'm not a fan of wire floors, but covered with shavings the chicks will never get down to the wire. Plus, I have single- and double-plastic tote brooders set up for the brand new babies. This one will be used when they are several weeks old and up. We moved the perches down to where they're usable for chicks and added a couple of ceramic heat lamp fixtures that are height-adjustable. The left one has a heat lamp bulb and the one on the right is just a 60w bulb for now. There is a slot in the top for a slide-in divider so it can be split into two separate brooders, with hinged doors on each end for access to both sides. When the weather gets warmer I'm going to touch up the paint on the stand where it's showing a bit of rust.
I'm going to start selling a few Black Copper Marans chicks. I currently have a rooster and hen plus several young chicks from the Wade Jeane line, and I'm hatching some eggs (today!) that are a cross of the Wade Jeane and Bev Davis lines so I won't be breeding brothers to sisters. This will be the perfect set-up for people to view and pick out their chicks without handling them, AND without having them come into my house (this is set up in the aisle way of my barn). My new Brinsea Octagon 20 Advance EX arrives tomorrow (yea!!!) and my goal is to sell enough chicks to give my DH back his "mad money" that he so lovingly gave me so I could buy a new incubator.
Added bonus: I used it two days ago as an isolation pen for my Dominique hen who had cut her foot and needed to be kept clean and medicated. It worked GREAT and I even put in an empty Tidy Cat bucket with the "hinge" left on (under stand, on the left) to keep the shavings in for a nestbox!
I like "Free"! "Free" is good! So, I drove over to his work to have a look-see. I took one look at it and said, "Free? FREE?? Heck yeah!!!!"
It was originally built for breeding finches, but I could see that I could make it work as a chick brooder. And it is going to save us a bunch of money because I was going to have my DH build a large partitioned brooder. The brooder itself is 3' tall by 6' long by 2' deep. On the stand, it is just over 5' tall. It has 1/4" heavy duty hardware cloth covering the fronts, with the left side completely covered and the right side halfway up by plexiglass to help keep out drafts. The floor is also hardware cloth with drop-down hinged plywood bottoms for cleaning. I'm not a fan of wire floors, but covered with shavings the chicks will never get down to the wire. Plus, I have single- and double-plastic tote brooders set up for the brand new babies. This one will be used when they are several weeks old and up. We moved the perches down to where they're usable for chicks and added a couple of ceramic heat lamp fixtures that are height-adjustable. The left one has a heat lamp bulb and the one on the right is just a 60w bulb for now. There is a slot in the top for a slide-in divider so it can be split into two separate brooders, with hinged doors on each end for access to both sides. When the weather gets warmer I'm going to touch up the paint on the stand where it's showing a bit of rust.
I'm going to start selling a few Black Copper Marans chicks. I currently have a rooster and hen plus several young chicks from the Wade Jeane line, and I'm hatching some eggs (today!) that are a cross of the Wade Jeane and Bev Davis lines so I won't be breeding brothers to sisters. This will be the perfect set-up for people to view and pick out their chicks without handling them, AND without having them come into my house (this is set up in the aisle way of my barn). My new Brinsea Octagon 20 Advance EX arrives tomorrow (yea!!!) and my goal is to sell enough chicks to give my DH back his "mad money" that he so lovingly gave me so I could buy a new incubator.
Added bonus: I used it two days ago as an isolation pen for my Dominique hen who had cut her foot and needed to be kept clean and medicated. It worked GREAT and I even put in an empty Tidy Cat bucket with the "hinge" left on (under stand, on the left) to keep the shavings in for a nestbox!
