I looked around for a watermelon box, as you'd suggested, but was not able to lay my hands on one so I got the biggest boxes I could find from No Frills and duct-taped them together
So the brooder is about 2x4 and I put a spare piece of plexiglas in it so that if water spilled it wouldn't get the cardboard all soggy. Made a really weebly ugly chickenwire-and-scrap-wood lid.
It is working fine for now, and in another week or two I will kick them out of the basement into the (dog-less) kennel building, which is concrete-floored and insulated and all that. I built them a Robert Plamondon style insulated plywood hover with a couple lightbulb sockets in it -- that should see them thru the rest of the brooding period.
I still have not decided whether to kick the existing coupla chickens out of their winter pen in the kennel and into their summer tractor (we still get some cold nights...) or just figure there's not much the chicks will catch from them via air. Dunno. Probably will depend on the weather
Pat

It is working fine for now, and in another week or two I will kick them out of the basement into the (dog-less) kennel building, which is concrete-floored and insulated and all that. I built them a Robert Plamondon style insulated plywood hover with a couple lightbulb sockets in it -- that should see them thru the rest of the brooding period.
I still have not decided whether to kick the existing coupla chickens out of their winter pen in the kennel and into their summer tractor (we still get some cold nights...) or just figure there's not much the chicks will catch from them via air. Dunno. Probably will depend on the weather

Pat