Building a Brooder Box

We have not had an actual brooder box the past couple years while raising the chicks. We had a lot of issues with loosing some due to being over crowded and heat lamps not being positioned properly. So we slowly learned how to fix these issues and this year being that we were starting the CSA and needed to have more chickens available at all times, we knew we had to build a better brooder box.

So I took pictures as Eric built it to show you how we built ours. Now obviously if you are a little farmer or are just getting a few chicks for yourself this brooder box is too big, but it will give you the idea.

The base is made using a large pallet with plywood screwed to it. It is very windy on our hill, so instead of using a slotted bottom like we have in the past we chose a solid one. The draft is something that can effect the chicks as well.




It is framed out with 2x4's. With plywood on the outsides. It will eventually get painted to protect the wood from the elements.

The hinges we had from something. Eric is the king of saving everything, so we decided to use them for this.

We placed a center piece under the top part of the framing to hang the heat lamps from. Generally they need to be in the center because if they are closer to an edge a lot of times they will all try to huddle under the lamps and end up squishing each other. We generally use 2 but this box will allow us to use 4 if need be. Hopefully it won't get that cold but hey it is NY so you never know.









We generally only keep the chicks in this box for 3-4 weeks. Just enough to get their feathers and be able to go out on pasture. Then they get transferred to the pasture with an enclosure that we close them in at night.