4 wouldn't be as bad as the 25 I had -- but I will NEVER brood in the house again! Lots of folks on here feel the same. You have incredible amounts of dust everywhere, from the fuzz they shed as they feather. Messy, too, of course. I promise you, your other half will like it a lot better, and it really is unnecessary if you don't live somewhere extreme.
Around here the old timers would hang a 100W bulb in a box in a shed and call it a brooder. Not good, they would lose some to cold, but an idea of what they really need.
My original plans, slightly changed by various things, were to get the chicks mid-February which is still extremely cold and snowy here. Right now we're hovering between low 20's and mid-40's, but a few weeks ago it NEVER got above 10 during the day with nighttime lows in the minuses. For that reason, I had decided on the house/garage (the cat room is actually a room built onto the house inside the garage). With my plans being changed for me (feed store doesn't get their first chicks in until mid-March), it changes most of my plans slightly, lol. I was going to not even worry about transforming my shed into a coop until after the girls were here and the weather had warmed up enough for me to be out there doing the renovating.
I really like the idea of putting the whole brooder out there though, so I think my number one goal right now is going to be getting electricity run out there from the house (it sits in the back corner of our large backyard, the yard service guy calls it a double yard), 50' or so away. I want at least one outlet box, one standard light fixture (jelly jar style), and a place to hang extra lighting or a heat lamp from. This should be fairly simple since my SO plays pool with a guy who is an electrician and we live across the street from one as well! Once that's in, I'll be able to build roosts, nest box (still thinking I'll just put a covered litter box in for that, our cats insist on the really big ones and they look about the right size), shelving, etc... Before that though, I have to figure out where the wet wall is coming from! It could be from the currently broken glass in the window on the door (I plan on covering it with Hardware cloth to allow for ventalation, as well as a wooden/plastic insert for cold/wet months), but it could be a leaky roof as well.
The roof needs to be redone this summer, my Uncle is going to do that for me in July, because of wind damage and plain old age along with the previous owner's being DIY people, but they weren't very good at it!
In place of hardware cloth on one side of the run, I'm thinking of taking the paneling from our deck (leftovers from the house and shed) and putting them on the north side f the run. It'll be a short side, 5' max, but the siding would block our neighbor back there and their yappy dogs from seeing the gals in the run (which has to be in the corner of our lot due to placement of the shed amd my rhubarb, that will get a good hardware cloth fence as well to keep the chickens out of it). Those neighbors feed the darn squirrels and drive me absolutely mad with it, I don't neccessarily care if chickens annoy them, but I don't want to loose my pets over it either. Speaking of neighbors, the ones next to me, most effected by any added noise, are almost as excited about my getting chickens as I am. She grew up raising them, talk about a handy resource!
If I can't get the electric run in time, I will keep them in the room & garage until they can go out...it's not forever and not like I'm going to be doing all the time either. Once every few years, unless we decide to keep them until they go from natural causes....
How much you wanna bet, after having your first chicks, you get Chick Fever and cannot wait through next Winter for the opportunity to get more chicks the following Spring?
Lol, I would love to...but city code says I can only have 3.
Only way I got my SO talked into it at all was if I promised to obey the law. No outlaw chickens here! (Unless I can squeeze a 4th one in, lol.) The code says we can have 1 per 2,000 sqft on our lot, but as a general rule, 3 chickens is the most they allow. Since I already know we are breaking the rules with our shed (going to be turned coop) being only a few feet from our property line, I really don't want to push it, lol.
On the other hand...we currently go through 5 dozen eggs in 7-10 days! We both are low-carb eaters and eggs are used to make just about everything! In fact, I just finished my dinner of "mac & cheese" that used egg crepes in place of the pasta (8 eggs there for the whole meal, which includes lunch for both of us tomorrow too). Today was a 12 egg day (6 for breakfast, made pancakes, & 8 for dinner)! Anything less than 6 hens won't even put a very large dent in the number of eggs we buy each week... But, one hope I still cling to is finding another local (extremely local) that has an excess of eggs I can buy for a reasonable price (we pay $5 for 5 dozen at the store). I prefer the fresh eggs (duh, lol).
3 hens may not be enough, but for the forseeable future, it'll have to do. My dream house is out in the middle of many, many acres where I can have any sort of animal I want (I grew up in Madras, OR...total farm country! In fact, our house was sandwiched between 3 cow pastures and our horse pen!), my reality is a home in the middle of a big city where the city government gets to tell me what and how many I can have...
I put mine in a container like that but a clear one with the wire lid on. I think mine are 3-4 weeks old now and already try to fly right out everytime I open the lid to add the feed and change the water. I put them infront of the bathroom. However with the wire lid on they can't fly right out and explore the place outside of the brooder. I haven't thought of letting the wire lid opened so they could fly right out and explore. That might be a good idea to let them do that.
Hi WhySayWhat, I'm a newbie but I've been perusing this great forum a lot. One thing I didn't see when reading this thread is .... Your two cats will be curious, naturally. You don't want an accident.
I have a cat and it's been recommended to me to have a way of securing the cover onto brooder ... the screen, or whatever sort of cover ... so that a cat jumping up and down on top of the brooder, and maybe sticking a curious paw under the edge of the cover, can't get it loose. ..... and attach the heat lamp so that a 150 lb dog can't knock it off. Don't depend on only the clamp.
I'm looking forward to reading more about your brood .... I'll be doing it, too .... this spring.
My cat's are scared of anything "new", lol. Yesterday, without my knowledge our 75 lb. Lab let herself back in the house by pushing the slider open. We didn't notice, even with both of us (and 6-7 other people) in the house all day! I kept noticing my cats wanting to cuddle and warm up, they felt really cold and "smelled like outside" but since they never GO outside, I thought my SO had opened a window. Anyway, around 2:30pm we finally noticed that the door was open (followed the cold air) and were relieved that both cats were still in the house! Last time the door got left open, one of our cats did go outside, but not the 2 we have now (it was our fiesty Calico that past away a little over a year ago), Baby hid under the bed until the door got shut, lol.
As for chick safety though...I'm liking the idea of keeping the brooder in the coop/shed more and more each day, but have to wait until Wednesday to ask the SO's pool buddy if he'll do the wiring for us. Fortunately, they made it to Fall play-offs, so they play this week, lol. Last year they actually won City Cup (Cup tournament) and we got to go to Vegas in August for a week, for 9-ball. They won their spot this season in 8-ball (they play double jeopardy). If I can get electricity out there before March, they're gonna start their lives with me in the coop to keep the "annoyance factors" to a minimum.
I am a serial stalker of all things chick/brooder/hatching(even though I won't be able to do it myself)/coop/everything else myself! My SO teases me about my daily dose of chicken. I an so glad he's on track now...it makes the planning so much easier without him getting in my way all the time! Part of his turn around was actually getting him in the feed store and looking at prices for supplies. I think he had built up the costs of everything a bit higher than they actually are. Part of that though is the cost difference for what is online and what is in our local store. I was a little shocked to see lower prices in the store! Usually we shop around, and go home to order because it's cheaper online, lol.
Mason jar style waterer was just under $2 each, chick feeders (looks like I can put a glass jar on them too) were also just under $2...even the bigger feeders for when they get older weren't more than about $5 once both pieces were priced! I'm debating the water systems still...I rather like the "rabbit/gerbil" bottle style, I have raised both rabbits and gerbils, I know how easy those waterers are to take care of. But I'm not so sure how to make the nipple waterers. Somewhere I saw a kit for sale (online) and they had pretty good instructions, but the price tag was a bit out of my reach for trying to keep things "reasonable". Does anyone know if it's particularly hard to train chickens to use them if they start out with a "normal" chicken water bowl? I can usually get away with buying the "fancy" stuff if I can prove its worth the effort, lol. Back to my SO and him finaly getting on board...we saw a coop sitting outside the feed store (huge, had 6-8 nest boxes across one long side, but the "poeple door" was tiny and I'm not sure I could get inside) for $1575. He loved it instantly, lol, but that is more than our mortgage payment! Maybe...if I can find a part-time job somewhere...we'll get a "real" coop next year, lol.
