Honestly, as many years as i’ve had chickens now, i’ve never had a legit brooder box. This is partly because i’ve never timed the purchase of chicks with the weather in my area. Not a lot of planning ever went into it. I just purchased chicks when the older batch had died and i needed a replace a few chickens gone to respiratory illness or mosquito born diseases. A brooder box is for a very specific stage of the chickens’ lives. Once they have any amount of feathers instead of just fluff, they are too big for the box and must go outside…partly because of the size and partly because there is no lid. I’ve always raised chicks in an oversized stock tank meant to hold water for livestock. Well, i have now accumulated enough things in my one room tiny house that i cant fit the stock tank in here this winter. Most of this is because i have quite a few potted trees wintering in the house because i always think im going to get done more than i actually get done during the early part of the year. I have actually done planning this time around. Its been my dream ever since i knew they existed, to have chocolate orpingtons. The one feed store around here who carried them closed permanently, so, for a while i thought that dream had died. It is also tricky when looking for an out of state source of chocolate orpingtons because some actually look like and have traits of orpingtons, and others just appear to be some kind of brown chicken with no visible characteristics of the orpington. I love their size, their fluff, and their temperament. I wanted giant, fluffy, friendly chickens with feather free legs. I did find a hatchery in ohio that seemed to have chocolate orpingtons that were right up the alley of what i was looking for. So i reserved 12 and a free mystery chick due to arrive in mid march. Im not sure how many will expire in transit. I need 6 and the free mystery chick and however many others are still alive belong to my coworker for free. Chickens are real clique-ish in that if they didnt grow up together they peck each other to death so better to get too many than get too few because you cant just order again and add a couple…the slightly older chicks would kill the newbies simply because they were new. So, i bought this brooder box and i have plans (if nature should be willing to cooperate) to put them outside when they outgrow it and have the weather be sustainable for them (knock on wood). I do have an improvised mesh lid in the shed but it remains unclear how i plan to secure it. Basically, for the longest time, the other preparations were too big a job for the time i had available and the weather (cold and windy) so i worked on what i could….building the brooder box. It wasnt hard. The pieces were precut and you just fit them together. I did have to figure out how to get the water dispenser not to knock over, since every batch of chicks ive ever had has tried to commit suicide via dumping their only water source into the shavings the second i left for work and languishing in dehydration until supper. I bought a few of those velcro picture hanger things and had the intention of securing a couple to the cardboard box and a couple to the bottom of the water dispenser. However, i quickly found out the cardboard box didn’t weigh much and could be easily tipped. I took the rest of the bucket of clay i had from a previous project and fashioned a rectangle of clay to fit on the inside of the cardboard box and hold it in place. This seemed to work. Since there will originally be possibly as many as 13 chicks (you never know…they could all survive…anything could happen), i got a row feeder. Originally i was trying to set this thing up in the living room so i wouldnt have to sit sideways on the toilet for a month again and lose all the walking space in my very tiny tiny-house bathroom. However, the only shelf near an outlet that is securely fixed to the wall is in the bathroom, which sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to design a fire safe stand to hold the heat lamp above the brooder box so that i could take the image/blueprint to the guys and gal at home depot and figure out what supplies i needed to make it happen.
After 7 years of working in healthcare two hours away and homesteading as well ive accumulated a lot of things. I dont have time to clean it up or make the house look fancy. We’re surviving. I’ll do all that when i’m retired and the property is paid off. its cluttered and there’s not much room in here but we’re making it work and myself and the dogs are one step closer to being ready for our pending batch of baby chickens due to arrive in march. It’s strange to think that they arent born yet but we already have them scheduled to arrive. But, thats how a hatchery works. Mass production. I will purchase chick food closer to their arrival, so it will stay fresh and so there will be more room in the house for it after some of the trees go outdoors.