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What is a brooder box?
A brooder box is a warm safe enclosure that people use to raise baby chickens and other young poultry in. It can be a plastic baby pool, wooden crate or anything else you can dream of!
Why do I need a brooder box?
A brooder box will provide a safe enclosure to raise your baby chicks in. Chicks are very fragile and will need an enclosure to keep them warm, safe, and fed as they grow.
Main Supplies
Container Chicks will need an area, commonly a box or shed that they can grow in. Size for this does matter! A good rule of thumb is about a half foot per chick in your brooder. But remember bigger is not always better! Small chicks are vulnerable to catching a chill and getting too far from the heat source provided. They don’t have mom to call them back over to warmth so its important that you keep this in mind when making the brooder. I suggest being able to have a board to separate the pen while the chicks are young and as they begin to feather out opening the pen up to provide more space preventing over crowding.
Bedding
Bedding provides warmth and sanitation. Let’s get real, babies poop a lot and chicks are no exception. You will be amazed how much they poop trust me. Part of that is learning how to control that poop. The mucky muddy mess a brooder can become in a night is a beautiful breeding ground for disease and illness. If the brooder gets filled with poop the chicks can easily get wet and catch a number of illnesses. My personal favorite bedding is simple pine shavings. They’re cheap and easily found in most towns or cities due to pet rodents using them too. I have heard of people using hemp bedding, pine pellets, straw, and paper shreds. I would highly recommend doing some research in what the best fit for you is.
Food and Water
There are so many opinions out there for food types and how to provide your chicks with the food and water. I encourage you to go out there and read for yourself other opinions. But for the sake of simplification, I recommend a simple water and food container like this one.
It is easy for the chicks when they are small to reach their beaks into when they’re small and when they’re tall enough you just have to put it up on a brick to prevent them from stomping in it.
Onto the topic of food, I used this one. Purina Start and Grow | Non-Medicated Chick Feed Crumbles | Nutritionally Complete – 25 Pound (25 lb.) Bag. Some people will recommend medicated but other people like me have decided against it. It is something you can look up but for me I find it unnecessary as it can lead to less of an immune system as an adult bird. Really it’s preference but as a start, the food listed above meets all nutritional standards and is readily available. Just make sure to order crumbles cause chicks cannot physically eat pellets yet!
Heat
This is the most important one. A heat source improperly installed can cause a fire that not only can kill your chicks but take out the building you are raising them in. With this in mind let’s get onto the two readily available heat sources that are available. Heat lamps and heat plates. Heat lamps are just that, metal shades with a heating bulb that gets hotter the closer you place it to the brooder. The safest option of bulb is the ceramic bulb. Not only is it safer the bulb does not omit light. This is important because if you have a light on your chicks for too long, they will get stressed and start mutilating each other. The other option for heat stated above was heat plate. This is a plate with four legs that you can raise up or down depending on the heat you need. I personally use a heat lamp with a ceramic bulb. For a beginner though the heat plate may be a safer easier option. Overall it comes down to personal preference and the type of brooder you pick.
In conclusion it comes down to these five things and your personal preference on how to fulfill these requirements.
