Brooder Building

Yesterday was my birthday. What better to do on your birthday? Build a chicken brooder of course! What's a chicken brooder? It's a big box that is similar to an oven and keeps baby chicks warm until they are old enough to move outside. With my chicks arriving in T-minus 4 days I was in need of a place to keep them. Some people use cardboard boxes or something like that but I wanted something a little bit nicer to house my little fluff balls. First I started searching the shop, nothing there. Then I searched the garage. BINGO! Sean has an old casting table that he used several years ago to cast aluminum parts. It was under a ton of stuff and full of casting sand but I saw potential.



We drug it out and took it over to the shop. Brooders need to be a decent size as the chicks will stay in them for at least 5-6 weeks in which time they will grow a tremendous amount. It needed to be at least 18 inches tall so we went to work cutting sides out of an old board of plywood. What I like is being able to do a whole project without having to go to Home Depot even once, by just finding scraps and such lying around. We attempted to use the table saw to cut the big plywood board but I managed to kill it. I was uninformed and pinched the blade with the wood thus causing the motor to burn up. Oops. Guess we're now looking for a new table saw. Thank goodness for the circle saw.



We put in a toddler sized window on the front so Wesley, Alex an Abby can come up and look in to see how the chicks are doing. We covered it in screen taken from a demolished window screen (darn dogs).






Once the sides were screwed in and the window added, it was time for a top. We dug out some thin pine trim boards and put them together and added some chicken screen. Sean attached it all with staples and added some hinges we dug up.





Finished.





I think it turned out nice. I bought a heat lamp last week that is sitting on the top. The chicks have to be kept at 95 degrees for the first week and every week after it will be decreased by five degrees until they can go outside. Once they go outside they'll still need a heat source at night. So now, if you ever feel inclined, you know how to build a chick brooder. I'm sure you're all super excited. :)