Well, not anymore, but when we took these pictures they were chicks! As usual, a little behind here with the posting and the broilers are now 4 1/2 weeks old, but wanted to talk a bit about the brooder we built. The base is a simple 4 X 8 frame made with 2 bys.
I covered the frame with hardware cloth and some strapping around the edges to hold it down.
The hardware cloth allows for the finest particles of shavings to fall through so they don't bother the chicks in the first few days.
Some left over scraps of 2 bys fit the bill for some corner braces. These pieces are 3 feet tall but I later cut them to 2 feet as I realized 3 feet was excessively tall. I snipped the hardware cloth and fit these into the corners.
Tada! So I stopped taking pictures but after some center bracing at 4 feet i screwed some scrap wood onto the bottom and filled the rest of the walls with ploy board. This made it lighter so we can move the box around if need be and also allowed for sunlight to come in for some additional and natural heat. The roof is just hardware cloth that we can roll up and back on.
We set the brooder up with two 250-watt heat lamps for 50 birds, and laid paper towels on top of the shavings for the first 24 hours. The chicks seemed right at home.
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