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BEST DIY Duck Brooder! EASY TO CLEAN! How To Make a Duck Brooder or Chick Brooder
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4 Super Simple DIY Brooder Setups – Fosters, Feathers, and Fur
When getting started with raising chicks and ducklings, one of … A lot of people use and love kdie pools as brooders and I can see why.
Source: fostersfeathersandfur.com
Date Published: 1/8/2022
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4 Super Simple DIY Brooder Setups
When you start raising chicks and chicks, one of the first decisions to make is what type of brooder to house your chicks in until they are old enough to be moved to their permanent outdoor coop.
During our time raising chicks and ducklings we have tried different rearing systems. All of these setups are super simple, but each has its own pros and cons, and some work better for some people’s situation than others.
Hopefully this helps you decide if a DIY build like this is best for you! FYI, I’m using the term DIY fairly loosely here because most of these don’t require you to build anything yourself, but they are items that are repurposed from their intended use to use as a brooder.
Setup 1: plastic bag
This is the first setup we tried when we bought our first pair of chicks and chicks on the fly. The great thing about this setup was that it was cheap and we already had a few totes at home so it worked great to get us started on our first “Oopsie” purchase.
The problem with this setup came a few weeks later when these tiny chicks and ducklings began to grow (which they do super fast!) and began to outgrow their place. If you have more than a few ducklings or chicks in a setup like this, you’ll need to upgrade to a larger setup fairly quickly.
Do you have pets? This setup may not be suitable for you. Because these plastic carrier boxes are so flat (short sides) and the birds grow so quickly, you will soon find that the chicks sleep on the sides of the box and the chicks are taller than the box.
This can make them easy targets for your dog or cat to reach when they settle down, or even easily reach into the incubator and grab them. Trust me, we learned this lesson the hard way! More on that another time…
Chicks sitting on the side of a plastic box group at just a few weeks old!
Chicks who can jump onto the sides of the boxes also mean it’s only a matter of time before someone gets adventurous and you have free range house hens! And that, my friends, means you can clean up poop. Everywhere… lots of it…
Of course, you can easily solve these problems by putting a lid on the incubator. You just need to make sure there are holes in the lid to allow for adequate ventilation for your little ones to breathe! Most people drill a large hole in the center of the lid and cover it with hardware or chicken wire to accomplish this.
You must also be careful when hanging or attaching the heat lamp to the side of the box if using one of the traditional heat lamps, as opposed to other incubator options, as these get very hot and can hang quite low into the incubator, which can mean your chicks or chicks will quickly get too hot. And as they grow, they can also accidentally bump into the heat lamp. Especially when the chicks start jumping and flapping around more.
Structure 2: Children’s pool
We only tried this setup briefly for a round of chick and chick. We wanted to try something different than the plastic box and our neighbor provided us with a children’s pool for free, so we decided to give it a try as a brooder.
It was great because it was cheap (you can’t beat free! But even if you can’t get one for free, they don’t cost much).
Lots of people use and love kiddie pools as nesting dens and I can see why. Depending on the size of the pool you get, there is plenty of room for everyone to run and stretch their wings. Certainly an improvement over the plastic bag in that regard.
Chicks just a few weeks old are mastering their escape routine!
I wasn’t that big of a fan of this setup, however, because the pool felt a bit large for the living room, which meant it ended up in the garage. I personally prefer my incubator in the living room to the garage because I find it easier to spend time with the chicks or chicks. You’ll probably want to spend a lot of time with them if you want them to be friendlier as adults. Besides, who doesn’t want to spend time with cute fluffy babies?!
Similar to how tote boxes are set up, kiddie pools usually have short sides, meaning you’ll have potential runaways within a few weeks. So if you don’t want chicks running around willy-nilly, you need to come up with some sort of cover. Designing a cover for a children’s pool can be a little more difficult than the plastic tote bag due to the shape of most children’s pools.
The pool we used was deeper (higher sides) but as you can see in the picture above it had stairs which the young chicks began to master in no time!
Structure 3: Prefabricated Coop
I love using this ground level coop as a garage breeder! Get the babies used to life in the stable right from the start!
Using them for brooding babies is one of many ingenious ways you can repurpose a pre-made (store-bought) coop. We use them for various things here and tried using one as a brooder after we started finding breakaways from the kids’ pool.
If you’ve looked at prefab chicken coops at all, you know that if you only want to use it as a brooder, but if you’re going to use (or keep) it as a brooder and then your coop, this can be a pretty expensive route. laying around for other purposes – trust me, it might be more handy than you think!
If you plan to use a prefab coop as an incubator you will need to make sure it is at ground level (or as close as possible) as the chicks are not usually able to climb the steep ramps these pens come up with until they do several weeks old, and ducks are not usually good with steep ramps at any age.
Oops! Ignore the mess in the background… but the garage is a great spot for easy-to-clean incubators!
This setup is virtually impossible for us to keep indoors (unless you were going to put something underneath) due to the size and the fact that the running portion has no bottom. Again, I usually like my chicks in the house. At least for the first bit, so I can bring in a little bonding time.
However, the great thing about this setup is that it will help your fledgling or chicks get used to tucking into bed at night. You’ll get used to the typical coop-and-run setup right from the start! And they’re fully enclosed, so as long as you close the outer access doors – no runaways!
We keep the coop in the garage while they are too young to go outside (less than about 6 weeks old) so they are sheltered from inclement weather and we can provide them with the warmth they need to stay warm. We can then move them (and this pen if necessary) outside to an area where they can begin to be safely integrated with the rest of the herd.
Sometimes these stables can be quite flimsy and difficult to move, but with a little time and patience it can be done!
Structure 4: Water trough made of metal
Potions: not the cheapest option, but durable and super easy to use!
The last setup we tried is the tried and tested farm shop setup with the galvanized water trough.
These things are great! They are a decent size; larger than the plastic bags we used but not so big that they don’t fit inside the house. And of course they’re super strong and durable, especially if you’re just using them indoors as an incubator, so they’ll last forever.
These are very similar to the construction of the plastic carry case, but they’re usually taller so the heat lamp (if attached to the side of the tub) is high enough that we don’t have to worry as much about it bumping into it.
It’s also harder for your pets (well, maybe not cats, but at least dogs) to snatch them out of the incubator. They aren’t fully enclosed and don’t have a lid, so if you need one, you’ll have to make one.
Our cat never bothered with the chickens. Unless he’s upset because we’re paying attention to them instead of him, ha! And the trough is too big for our dachshunds, so we don’t always cover it. Especially when our chicks are very young and cannot get tall enough to perch on the sides.
We made a makeshift hardware fabric lid while we had two brooding mamas raising some chicks (for a few weeks) in the trough because the mamas could stand up on the sides.
But the biggest downside with these, and the reason we didn’t start with one, is the cost. They are definitely expensive and not as versatile as a prefab coop as you can continue to use it for your chickens and ducks once they grow past the brood stage.
What’s your favorite dimple setup? Have you tried any of these and loved them or maybe hated them? Leave a comment below and let me know!
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