Square brooder?!

Yeah, mostly a problem with larger quantities. I feel pretty confident that the vast majority of people on this forum use rectangular brooders, I do. The concern is that something will panic them (it often doesn’t take much), they will pile up in a corner, and some smother. It does happen.

There are a lot of things that can happen, and actually have. A piece of space junk might fall out of the sky and hit your house. You might have a fender bender on a trip to the grocery store. The sun might shine here today. The odds of these things happening can vary quite a bit, but they all have happened.

The possibility of chicks smothering by them piling up in your brooder is possible, even in a round brooder, but it’s not very likely. It’s something I’m not concerned about.

 

It depends on the size of your brooder, not the shape. They do need space. They grow quickly. Average brooder size you should have is 1 square foot of space per chick. They need space to not walk in their food and water and space to get away from the heat of the heat lamp if they need to.

 

If you are brooding 100's of chicks in a large brooder house you definitely need to be concerned about them piling up and smothering the ones on the bottom. Much of the written advice for brooding chicks (or chicken husbandry in general) was written by extension agents for farmers. Your 8 chicks aren't ever gonna have an issue with this.