A QUICK AND SIMPLE OUTDOOR BROODER

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Right now—while the ground is covered with ice and snow?is the time to hie down to the workshop and whip out one of these simple little outdoor brooders. Then, when you're ready to raise that mini-flock of homestead chicks next spring or summer, you'll be all set?just like Linda and Bill Bayliss of Pleasant Lake, Michigan?to handle the job in style.

Most homesteaders would never think of crowding their laying hens together in a cramped, windowless enclosure (the way today's commercial poultrymen do). And yet, a good many small-scale farmers willingly foster just such conditions when it comes to raising chicks.

Not us. After years of experimentation, we've developed a system that allows us to rear small groups of late spring or summer peepers (no more than 25 at a time) in natural surroundings, with or without a setty hen. Our secret: We start our chicks in portable outdoor brooders.

An outdoor; "peep box" like the one in the accompanying photo can be made simply and inexpensively from scrap lumber, a couple of hinges, a porcelain light fixture, and a screen or iron grating (the rack from an old refrigerator, for instance). Our brooders cost us only about a dollar each to build, since we're able to scrounge all their parts except for the hinges and light fixtures. (Even if you end up buying new lumber, however, your total cost per brood box shouldn't be more than $6.00 or $7.00.)

Each of the frames we build is divided into two sections: [1] a large run that's screened on the top and open at the bottom, and [2] an adjoining, fully enclosed, brooding area with an entrance to the run at one end, a light bulb for heat at the other, and a hinged top.

The exact dimensions of your finished brooder (or brooders) will depend on the size of wire rack you use over each run. Ours measure 9" deep by 40" by 40" (with 12" down one side of the square for the enclosed and heated box). Try not to make your frame too much larger than this, or you'll sacrifice one of the design's most important features: portability.

If you're raising only a few chicks?or the weather's warm?you can use a bantam hen to warm your babies. Otherwise?like us?you'll want to mount a porcelain light socket in the brooding compartment and vary the wattage of its bulb according to the season. (Your chicks will then automatically choose the most comfortable location between the bulb and the entrance to the outside run.)

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