2. DIY Chicken Brooders & Other Brooder Basics

Lacy Armentor
Lacy Armentor Uphill Farm

For chicks that aren’t raised by hens, their first weeks of life are spent in a brooder. What is a brooder?  A brooder is an enclosed, heated space where chicks are provided the environment that they need to grow and thrive. Mother hens provide warmth and security for their chicks and make sure they find food and water. Whether you choose a commercially-produced or DIY chicken brooder, it, along with the care you provide, takes the place of the mother hen.

Let’s begin with an overview of the basic requirements for a brooder. We’ll talk about what you should keep in mind when choosing the type of brooder you’ll use, and where you’ll set it up.

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Key Points on Chick Brooder Basics

  • Your brooder should be set up before your chicks arrive. This allows time for the brooder to warm up to temperature and minimizes the stress on your chicks.
  • Basic Brooder Requirements
    • Adequate space
    • Supplemental heat
    • Feed and water
    • Proper ventilation, yet free from drafts
    • Secure from predators and escaping chicks
    • Proper flooring
    • Easy to clean
  • Chicks require 1/2 sq ft of space per bird for the first few weeks of life and 1 sq ft of space for the remainder of their brooder residency.

Transcript: DIY Chicken Brooder Ideas & Other Brooder Basics

00:00:10 Your brooders should be set up before your hatchlings arrive. Allow time for the brooder to warm up and their water to warm the broader temperature. This allows the chicks to move directly into their brooder and learn where to eat, drink and keep warm. Brooders can be set up in your home, in a garage or shed, or within a larger chicken coop or barn.

Brooding Chicks Indoors

00:00:32 There are special considerations for each of these locations. If you plan to keep your brooder indoors, keep in mind that a lot of fine dust will be produced. This can be tough to get out of fabric and carpet, so you might want to stick to areas with hard surfaces such as bathrooms or laundry rooms or cover your furniture with protective covers if they’re nearby the brooder.

00:00:53 Although they aren’t always incredibly loud, you will be able to hear your chicks chirping, so be sure to consider that as well.

00:01:02 Depending on the location, you may set up your brooder indoors. You might need to decide if the heat or light from a heat lamp may disturb you. Though this can be mitigated with different heat source choices.

00:01:15 If you decide to set up your brooder in a garage or shed, make sure you have good ventilation, but that the chicks won’t be affected by drafts. Predators also have a better chance of getting into a shuttered garage, so you’ll likely want to cover your brooder with some sturdy hardware cloth for protection from predators. This may also be the case if you have family pets with access to your broader area.

Brooding Chicks Outdoors

00:01:40 Setting up a brooder in a large coop or outdoors will require protection from predators as well as the elements. Ensure the brooder is placed under our roof so that the chicks don’t get wet in the rain. Adult chickens might go out and forage in rain and bad weather, but you shouldn’t allow young chicks to get wet because they aren’t able to regulate their body heat yet.

00:02:04 You may also have to partially cover the brooder to keep too much heat from dissipating. Be sure to leave plenty of ventilation for the chicks and don’t trap in too much heat to the point that chicks can’t move to a cooler area of the brooder.

00:02:18 The possibilities are endless when it comes to deciding what to use as your brooder. We’ll look at a few different examples to give you some inspiration. Regardless of what your brooder looks like, there are some factors that you will need to keep in mind when planning your brooder setup.

00:02:34 We’ll go further into detail on each of these in the next sections.

Chick Brooder Specifications: What Is a Brooder?

00:02:40 Your brooder will need to be large enough to comfortably house your chicks, allowing them to move around, access their feed and water, and move closer or further from their heat source as needed.

00:02:52 You will need to provide that heat source for your chicks. The most common options are heat lamps and panel heaters. You want to make sure that your chicks can get away from the direct heat if they get too warm.

diy-chicken-brooder-panel-heater

00:03:05 We’ll talk about a few different options for feeding and watering chicks. What you choose to use might be decided based on the amount of space you have in your brooder and how many chicks you’re raising.

00:03:17 Your chicks will need good air exchange, but you’ll want to make sure that you don’t have them placed directly under an air current, as this could cause them to get chilled. Since heat rises most open top brooders will have adequate ventilation.

00:03:32 If you aren’t sure if your location is free from drafts, you can hold a piece of tissue paper low in the brooder at check level, which is about two inches from the floor and see if it moves in a draft. The direction it blows will help you determine where your draft is coming from.

[Pause in narration for visual demonstration of how to use a plate warmer in your chick brooder.]

Securing Your Brooder Against Predators and Pets

00:04:38 Brooders should be secure so that predators aren’t a threat to your chicks. How you will predator-proof your brooder will depend a lot on where it’s set up. If you’re brooding chicks inside your home, you may have family pets you’ll need to protect your chicks from. If you put your brooder in an outdoor area or in a shed, you’ll want to consider predators such as raccoons and possums.

00:05:01 When your chicks first move into the brooder, you won’t have to worry much about them escaping. However, after a couple of weeks, they will begin to grow feathers and grow bold as well, and will begin wanting to explore the world outside of their brooder — whether you want them to or not. A cover made from hardware cloth is a good option for keeping chicks in, while allowing good ventilation, this helps with predator proofing as well.

Brooder Bedding and Cleaning Considerations

00:05:27 When you first receive your chicks, you can use paper towels or puppy pads to line the brooder as their first bedding. You want to switch to a loose bedding after a couple of days and we’ll talk more about those options here in a bit.

00:05:40 No matter what type of brooder you choose, they all have to be cleaned. Keep this in mind and make things as easy as possible for yourself. This is one of the reasons I use stock tanks or troughs as brooders. They’re large enough that I can brood quite a few chicks in them, but light enough that I can move them and clean them pretty easily by myself.

DIY Brooder Ideas: Stock Tanks, Plastic Totes, and Cardboard Boxes

00:06:03 As I mentioned before, I use stock tanks as brooders. They can be a little pricey if bought new, but they last for many years and have other uses as well. I have a few different sizes and choose which I use based on how many chicks I’m brooding. Having multiple is nice because when I’m cleaning my active brooder I can set my chicks in an empty brooder until I’m finished.

00:06:27 Bins and totes are a great, inexpensive option if you don’t have a lot of chicks to brood, or if you plan to move them into a larger space or amongst multiple totes as they grow.

00:06:38 A sturdy cardboard box can be a good option for a brooder. These might be a good choice if you’d like to avoid to clean up a brooder and store it when you’re finished brooding your chicks. Plus, you can likely get it for free. You could post on a neighborhood page and see if anyone has an appliance box you could reuse for your brooder. One great idea I’ve seen used is someone got a large watermelon box from their local grocery store, made a mesh lid for it, and use that as their brooder.

DIY Brooder Ideas: Puppy Pens, Kiddie Pools, and Kennels

00:07:07 Remember when I said that the possibilities are endless when it comes to brooders? If you’re creative, you can make a brooder out of so many everyday things. Here’s some inspiration for you. This is a portable puppy play pen that has a zip on net lid and a kiddie pool to make clean up easy. You would just have to lift the pull out and dump out the old.

diy-chicken-brooder-kiddie-pool

00:07:28 A dog kennel can make a really good brooder, and here’s a clever way to expand your brooder space as chicks grow. The kennel door can be opened into a second kennel once the chicks need more space. Note the cardboard lining. This keeps the bedding contained so that it doesn’t get spread out through the crate wires and makes cleaning up easier.

diy-chicken-brooder-dog-kennel

DIY Brooder Ideas: Used Furniture

00:07:50 An old crib or playpen is another option. These can easily be made secure and provide good ventilation. If you were to use a crib that was elevated off the ground, that can make caring for your chicks much easier if you have a bad back.

diy-chicken-brooder-crib

00:08:05 Use your imagination and give life to something that may otherwise be destined for the landfill. Here’s a really cool example of some ingenious thinking of how someone turned an old piece of furniture that they got at Goodwill into an amazing brooder. This one even happens to have a spot for a broody hen.

diy-chicken-brooder-wardrobe-conversion

DIY Brooder Ideas: Area Brooder in Existing Livestock Enclosures

00:08:31 If you have an existing structure such as a coop or a barn, or in the case of this example, a horse trailer that’s large enough where you can block off an area to brood your chicks in, this can be a great option. You will have the freedom to start small and keep chicks close to the heat source, food and water, and then increase the area your chicks have access to as they grow.

diy-chicken-brooder-area-brooder

00:08:54 One thing to be mindful of is if you do set up an area brooder in a larger coop, is that if you have an existing flock already and your chicks come from elsewhere, it’s best not to allow your established flock access to the space where the chicks are. I like to keep new birds quarantine from the flock for about 30 days to ensure I don’t introduce any new pathogens I wasn’t aware of that the new birds may have been carrying.

00:09:21 Adults can be rough on small chicks as well. In a later section, we’ll talk more about how to introduce chicks to an established flock. If you plan to continue to brood chicks and want a brooder that checks all of your boxes, you might want to build your own. If you’re handy, you can make a brooder to your own specs and will be able to use it for years to come.

DIY Brooder Ideas: Reclaimed Wood and Modular Brooder Panels

00:09:41 Here’s a fantastic example of a really well-done brooder that the builder designed and built himself. Of course, your brooder doesn’t need to be fancy. A great option is to use reclaimed wood or other materials and get creative.

diy-chicken-brooder-reclaimed-wood

00:09:56 You have the option to purchase modular brooder panel kits like this example. You can find both reusable and disposable options. You can add additional panels for your chicks as they grow to give them more space. And you can even purchase a complete kit that includes your heat source, feeder, waterer and a stand to elevate the feeder and waterer. Here’s a couple of different examples of configurations you can use.

modular-brooder-panels

Commercial Brooders and Batteries

00:10:25 Of course, there’s some really cool brooders that you can buy commercially. These may be a good option if you plan to continue to brood chicks year after year or wanna brood large numbers of chicks and want a very efficient setup. Box brooders come with heat sources, lights and water and food troughs that are built onto the outside of the brooder so that chicks can stick their head out to eat and drink, which avoids food and water mess inside the brooder. The floors are hardware cloth with removable trays underneath that you can pull out to clean. These can hold around 50 chicks for four weeks, or 100 chicks for two weeks.

commercial-chicken-brooder

00:11:03 A battery brooder is multiple box brooders that are stacked on top of each other in some instances, rather than being comprised entirely of brooders, some of the levels may be grow-out pens for older chicks to move into once they’ve outgrown their brooder box. These grow-out units are a bit taller and don’t have heat sources in them.

commercial-chicken-battery

How Big a Brooder Do I Need?

00:11:25 Space requirements will increase as the size of your chicks increase. You can either start out with the brooder that’s large enough for the chicks throughout their entire brooder residency, or you can start smaller and allow them to graduate to a larger space or split the chicks between multiple brooders as they grow.

00:11:43 Chicks require enough room to be able to move around and get exercise and have the ability to move away from their heat source. Overcrowding can cause health issues such as weak Slade legs and an increased risk of coccidiosis. Behavior problems such as chicks pecking each other are exacerbated by overcrowding.

00:12:06 You can expect to provide about 1/2 a square foot per chick for the first few weeks, after which the chicks will require about one square foot of space per bird.

00:12:17 These guidelines are for standard sized chicks and bantams would require a little less space due to their smaller size.

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