Easy DIY Chick Brooder

Ideally, we’d have some broody chickens, but we do not currently have any. We do have some older hens slowing down on egg production and we need to replace them.

Since we live in an RV, there is no room to spare for the incubator or brooder. We do have a large barn, and we set this up to work in the barn. We can cover the entire unit with a 15’x20’ drop cloth (a tarp would work also) and the 250-watt light keeps the temps up in cooler weather. We can also just cover the incubator on cooler days to keep it from working so hard. We would like all the sides around the incubator to be foam but we used what we had on hand. You do want to leave some small cracks or openings around the top for CO2 to vent if you use something other than canvas to over it. We like canvas drop cloths because they exchange air through the fabric without openings. In warmer weather, we can remove the foam board to keep things at the right temps. We can also put a fan next to it.

This was made with what we had on hand. These shelving units can be had for cheap when they are used. The unit we used was 5’ long and 2’ wide and 6’ tall. We would have liked it to be 4’ long but this was what was available. You will want 5 shelves if possible.

Adding wheels to the unit was a must for us. We can wheel it outside to clean it out or leave it outside when we have nice days.

We have found that the foam on the back side does help keep the temps regular when it is covered. When it is covered, we can also use a small space heater on the middle shelf if it will be very cold and just keep the brooder plate on and set the space heater to 55 or 60. There are a lot of ways to make this work in an environment that is not conditioned.

The light is suspended on light duty chain and S hooks. The same type of chain is used for the front latch and also holds the door about 45 degrees when opened.

We have hardware cloth over the bottom shelf then plywood then cardboard then bedding. Once the chicks are older, we slide the plywood underneath with some plastic or cardboard over it to catch the droppings and make cleanup quick and easy.

A shelving unit on wheels (you can add the wheels), a handful of zip ties, light duty chain, S hooks, plywood/plexiglass/foam/cardboard is just about all you need. This may not be as inexpensive as a couple of kiddie pools or plastic totes but if you need the advantage of vertical space saving and mobility, we can’t think of a more cost-effective solution.

A couple of additional things you could do differently would be to turn the middle shelf into a second brooder. If you have shorter arms, I would make both sides hinged to allow access. I am 6’ and can reach all the way into it but my wife and kids cannot. If you had more shelves, you could have a bottom catch pan set up for the droppings.

Reply below if you want to see anything up close in an additional picture or need some more details. I will be happy to respond with the info you request. Please post some pics if you make one or have some other ideas on how you made the setup work for you.

If you leave the styrofoam anywhere chicks can reach with their sharp little beaks, they will try and eat it.

How many eggs do you plan to incubate at any time?

Jay Angler wrote:If you leave the styrofoam anywhere chicks can reach with their sharp little beaks, they will try and eat it.

How many eggs do you plan to incubate at any time?

Jay, it is hard to see but that styrofoam is on the bottom of the vertical shelf so there is almost 2" between the wire and the styrofoam. In the 6 weeks I have them in there, I do not think they will be able to reach it but due to your reply, I will keep a close eye on it and remove it if they get close.

I need to replace about 8 hens so I'll incubate 10-12 for now. Later, I will be incubating broilers but in phases and 12 at a time. I have an outdoor location to move them into when they get too big for the brooder. By then, it'll be plenty warm outside.

Josh Hoffman wrote:but in phases and 12 at a time.

What I mean is that I can add eggs to the incubator at different intervals and have successive successful hatchings. I can space everything out so that we can utilize the infrastructure we have currently.

Great documentation!

I utilized a bin-based brooder with a hot plate and a wire mesh vented top and had good luck. The one thing that I haven't figured out though is how to tame all the dust that the chicks end up producing.

Do you for-see dust being an issue and any plans around that?

Timothy Norton wrote:Do you for-see dust being an issue and any plans around that?

The front and top are currently open wire. I will remove the foam back when the outside temps are somewhat warmer. It will be uncovered most days due to the daytime highs. It is located in a 2k sqft barn that we have our RV parked in and the barn doors are opened up every day. The inside of the barn is completely open/no walls except exterior walls.

I know the plexi is charged with static electricity and does get dirty because it draws the dust to it but otherwise, I do not expect the dust to be an issue. This is a new setup for us so I can update over time as our experiences play out.

It got down to 33 last night outside and in the barn. I kept and eye on the incubator temp and it held temperature just fine with the drop cloth around the rack.

I am going to candle the eggs tomorrow or Saturday. The rooster I have was newer but I saw a lot of "activity" out of him leading up to the decision to hatch some eggs.

Thank you Josh, we have been contemplating this kind of build for a while. Your process is admirable and easily replicated I think.  Good luck on the results my friend

Hi Josh,
Is that light a heat lamp or a regular light? I ended up with a heat lamp in my setup one year, because the weather was too cold for just the hot plate. Was it temperature or anything specific that made you do both?

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Josh,
Is that light a heat lamp or a regular light? I ended up with a heat lamp in my setup one year, because the weather was too cold for just the hot plate. Was it temperature or anything specific that made you do both?

Matt, this is the first go around trying to brood the chicks in the unheated barn. Since it is untested, I wanted to have both as the hot plate supposedly does not work well under 50 degrees. That is what the manual says and so it may be a CYA statement or they may be serious, I'll have to see what the chicks do.

I may not need it after all because today may be the last winter death throw here. It all mid 70's highs and mid 40's-50's lows after today. I still plant to keep an eye on the temperature and have the light as a backup for the first night or two.

Do you remember what ambient temperature cause the chicks to shift to the heat lamp?

I'm not sure the exact temp, but I know the outside got down to freezing, and I'd guess the unheated garage was down to low 40's. The hot plate was preferred and worked well when it was warmer... I don't think they were designed for unheated spaces.

Just out of curiosity: wouldn't it be easier to let the hens brood and hatch the chicks themselves? Hens are really good mothers.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Just out of curiosity: wouldn't it be easier to let the hens brood and hatch the chicks themselves? Hens are really good mothers.

I think he said none of his hens were broody right now?

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Just out of curiosity: wouldn't it be easier to let the hens brood and hatch the chicks themselves? Hens are really good mothers.

That would be the best scenario for sure. I have considered ordering or sourcing locally some that are know to go broody and breed that into what I have.

We wanted to get the chickens locally and the person we got them from had white leghorns and rhode island reds at the time so that is what we have.

I do think having an incubator will be nice for the meat birds so we can do them anytime we want and not have to rely on broodiness.

PS. I butchered both of the RIR roosters. They were not the best with the hens and a little more obnoxious to me that I would have preferred. Some people may have had good experiences with them but I did not.

Josh Hoffman wrote: PS. I butchered both of the RIR roosters. They were not the best with the hens and a little more obnoxious to me that I would have preferred. Some people may have had good experiences with them but I did not.

Even within a breed, birds have personality. The way to improve a breed it to eat the ones that don't meet your needs! That's harder to do with hens because it they are producing eggs making it harder to justify culling them, but if I have available infrastructure, I do it by putting my best females with the fellow of my choice, and use eggs from that shelter alone to hatch from.

Even within a breed, birds have personality. The way to improve a breed it to eat the ones that don't meet your needs! That's harder to do with hens because it they are producing eggs making it harder to justify culling them, but if I have available infrastructure, I do it by putting my best females with the fellow of my choice, and use eggs from that shelter alone to hatch from.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I did not get them until they were 4 months old. We spend a lot of time with the chickens and rabbits besides the chores with them. Their previous owner did not, so I let it go for too long with the first one because I though some additional human interaction would help. I gave the second one a day and then butchered him on day 2 after seeing what he was like as the alpha.

We had an awesome rooster before these two jokers but he broke his leg and it got infected.

We have 55 eggs that candled well on 14 days out of 60 total eggs.

Rhode Island Red roosters and white leghorn hens.

We have all of them sold but plan to keep back 8 hens and a couple roosters to replace some older layers.

Does anyone have any experience with this hybrid? What were your thoughts on them?

Update

Josh Hoffman wrote:We have 55 eggs that candled well on 14 days out of 60 total eggs.

Rhode Island Red roosters and white leghorn hens.

We have all of them sold but plan to keep back 8 hens and a couple roosters to replace some older layers.

Does anyone have any experience with this hybrid? What were your thoughts on them?

Out of the 55 eggs, we had 51 hatch to chicks and all 51 chicks survive until they were sold, butchered +  I kept 10 hens that have been laying for several weeks. 2 of the eggs fell off of the incubator rack during the incubation period by accident. 2 failed to get themselves all the way out of the eggs.

30 were roosters and 21 hens. I had the roosters in chicken tractors and the hens separate. I butchered the roosters around 15-16 weeks over a couple of weekends days. They were small but taste good. I had a good time with the kids helping with everything from incubate to butcher. The hens have interesting coloring. Some have just a couple of black feathers and others have brown beaks, darker legs, half brown feathers. Quite a variety of colors. They lay a light brown egg so in between the leghorns and RIR hens we have. I tried out 6-8 roosters with my existing flock over the course of time and they were all an issue for one reason or another and I did not keep any. I currently have 1 white leghorn rooster and 22 hens. 10 leghorns, 2 RIR, 10 crosses.

I am currently brooding some barred rock straight runs. At first I thought I would just build a coop/run extension and keep a larger bird in there to breed for meat and have the leghorn for eggs in the original section. I built the extension and kept the crossed hens in there from 2 weeks until they were big enough to integrate with the older hens.  

I am not sure I want to do that now and am going to mix the barred rocks in with the leghorns and 2 RIR hens. I should, mostly, be able to tell which eggs are which and will keep a barred rock rooster or two out of the straight run. Now my goal is more to select for a large dual purpose cross over time starting with the barred rocks but it is just another experiment.

I don't feel comfortable having to order chicks every year so that eliminated freedom rangers and similar. I do not want to raise the cornish x from all that I read. On the other hand, we do buy feed so it would be great to eventually be at a point where we have a good dual purpose crossed flock and get our feed needs way down. The again, 8 mouths to feed means a lot of chickens. We are trying to find what is acceptable for us as far as time/money/outside inputs.

I am continuing to experiment.

The brooder worked great and I have a lot of room for storage above it and a lot of airflow for this hotter time of year. I have not changed a thing since I made it except add a little piece of fence to block the gap between the door and upper shelf. I underestimated how quickly they would be able to use their wings for flight. These barred rocks are 2 weeks old today and it is working as well as last time.

I have had experiences where some breeds will pick on other breeds, but this depends on both the density and the design of the system. If there's lots of hidey holes and different levels so that birds can easily avoid birds that don't like them, that will help.

I would just suggest that you consider a back-up plan if you find your layer breeds don't get along with the heavier dual purpose or "meat breed".  I have one heavy, gentle rooster I was given, and one of the industrial birds kept pecking at his feet to the point he started hiding in a nest box. I moved him into my "International" shelter - mostly Khaki Campbell ducks, a bonded pair of Muscovy and 2 Industrial chickens and he's been fine since.

Always good to have options!