At the White family homestead we raise a few chickens for their eggs.  Mrs. White and I have been talking about getting a few more chickens to round out our flock.  Before purchasing more I just had to find another place to raise the chicks, we had raised the previous chicks in our garage.  As anyone who has raised chicks can attest to it is filthy, there is a fine dust everywhere and I use my garage all the time, I could not raise another batch of chicks in my sanctuary.

                So I wandered around the property looking for materials and ideas to build a “brooder”.  Recently I was fortunate to have a coworker replace their old cedar fence and I grabbed up all the free wood that I could, the fence was pretty bad and out of 50 or so boards there were 10 full length “nice” boards.  I grabbed up four of those boards they measure about 12” wide by 8’ long.  One end of the board is rounded and the other rotted off so I cleaned all four boards up by cutting them off with the circular saw.

                We converted an old shed/green house to a coop and the inside of shed is large probably 15’x15’ so it is plenty large enough to accommodate a smallish brooder.   However the floor in the main coop is all pea gravel and not really suitable for the little chicks. To fix this Issue I cut a piece of scrap plywood to 37in X 48in mainly because it was the largest dimensions I could get out of the scrap wood.  I leveled the ground under the plywood with my hand and got the plywood to sit as neat as possible in a corner of the coop. By using the corner I only had to build two sides of the brooder and it was then out of the way.

                To secure the sides of the brooder I cut a 2x6 in half length wise on my table saw three pieces in all.  I then screwed them to the two walls and corner of the plywood square I had laid down in the corner.  I could now measure how long my fence boards needed to be, it turned out to be 37in x 48in.  Next I cut the fence boards down to size then screwed it all together and had the basic box of the “brooder”. 

                The last time we raised chicks our outside cats got a couple of our lil guys so this time we were determined to keep this from happening again.  We needed to build a very secure lid this time, to do this I ripped some more 2x6 boards down the center and built a frame out of the pieces I also used the same boards to brace the center and corners of the frame.  After the frame was completed we stretched chicken wire across the top and secured it with a staple gun.

                Now came the task of securing the lid to the box I had just built, I scrounged up to hinges I had bought for another project and never used.  To figure out the layout of the hinges I just laid them on the lid and measured the distance from both outside edges of the lid and marked the hinge screw holes on the lid.  Everywhere I had to screw into the old 2x6 boards I pre-drilled holes and screwed the pieces together the wood is very dry and splits easily.  Once the hinges were on the lid I put the lid back on the box and ran the screws into the walls of the shed.

                Now we had the brooder all done and just needed to run a heat lamp to it so the chicks would be all cozy and warm.  Luckily the shed had power ran to it from the previous owners so a quick extension cord and we were in business I just secured the lamp to the bottom side of the chicken wire lid tossed in some pine shavings and we were ready.  We ended up getting eight new ameraucana chicks.