hey guys my name is angela and welcome back to our channel today we're going to
be doing something a little bit different we are going to make an easy diy chicken brooder
a couple of weeks ago actually it's been about two weeks we got some day-old chicks
hoping we could stick them underneath our two broody hens and that they would
take them as their own but that didn't pan out the hens did not want them
oh
everything looks good for now we'll give it a couple of days and see how it
sitting goes
so we are stuck brooding some chicks for the next six to eight weeks
we do have a smaller i guess regular sized storage tote that we have them in right now
but they are quickly outgrowing that we want to give them some more room to run
play whatever they do so we decided to go bigger we have this 64 gallon tote here
it's like mega what we're gonna do is work on the lid and make it a little more chick friendly
this is a big one we're first gonna start by cutting out the inside and we're going to be
replacing that with chicken wire so i have here our oscillating tool and a half moon cutter on
it this is a pretty awesome tool if you haven't used one it's good for a lot of cutting things
and especially for me because i kind of am scared of cutting things and this one's not bad so i'm
going to go ahead and start cutting around a spot big enough so it can get some good airflow one of
the main reasons we chose this tote was for this lid it kind of has a waffle pattern on top and
it's designed in a way that it's going to be nice rigid and strong even taking the center out of it
well that was loud and obnoxious but it is over and it cut out this piece really
well i'm now going to use my little sanding disc to clean up the edges
before we prep the area to put in the chicken wire
so i'm holding down the chicken wire and seeing where the best places for
the zip ties are going to go and i'm going to make a mark with my pencil that way i can
line it up and see where to drill the holes at so i have a quarter
inch drill bit right here and i'm going to go ahead and go around and drill my holes
hold this
this way either way
i'm finding my holes and i have four inch zip ties here
i'm just pulling it too keeping a little bit of extra on the outside
do
so now that it's all attached i can go ahead and push the excess up in that little recess
and then i'm going to cut off the excess and snap the little ends off of the zip
ties
now it's time to clean this up a little bit by snipping
all the ends off the zip ties and i believe we might be done with the lid
ha ha that part's done
hey that looks pretty nice
so we're gonna do a little something extra for the chicks because they probably do have
another five or six weeks in this brooder we're going to make them a small roost
perch whatever you want to call it so that they can start getting used to it okay
we have some scrap pieces of plywood here that we drilled holes in to match
and then we have two little dowels i think these are half inch
so we have two perches here mainly for stability because if you only put one in a triangle this is
going to just be able to move all over the place and it gives them something more to play with so
next i'm going to go ahead and put everything together since all the construction is done
i want to add in some fine shavings about two inches worth and then put in all the
feed water that sort of thing for the chicks i am using fine pine shavings so you can get
at your local feed and seed i like the fine shavings better because it tends to break down
quicker and you don't have a big pile of coarse shavings in the yard if you dump yours in
your yard somewhere and also if you compost it will break down quicker with the fine shavings
so most people might keep their brooder their chicks in a garage or a barn we don't really
have either so we're going to move them into my soap shack which has heat and water in there so
it'll be easier to take care of them in the meantime they have been in our boys bedroom
which we've been renovating but they need to move out because we have more to do in there
so we're going to go ahead and pick up and take them up to the soap shack and finish it out
so we're in the soap shack now and i've got everything together i wanted to show you we use
a heating pad that's made for small animals and it doesn't get too hot or anything we use
that for the chicks instead of a heat lamp it's just preference mainly we will put a link below
if you're interested i have to say it's a lot nicer and you have better peace of mind
knowing that it's probably not going to catch on fire one reason that this is great to have the
open top like this is those chicks create a lot of moisture and we have seen the inside of their tote
totally condensated on the sides or whatever it was just it was foggy in there so this is going
to allow a lot more air flow and breathing room we didn't know it but a benefit of
using the chicken wire is your electric cords fit through it so it'll help a lot with this
so these little boogers are about two weeks old and they are already getting pretty big
so i think they're gonna really love this new space that we're putting them in um
they are golden comets and they are all female hopefully
oh so it may look a little cramped in here and it kind of is but it does have wheels on it so
on a nice day if i need to come in here and work i can always wheel them outside let them enjoy
some outside time and have all my space back so it may not be the best solution for everyone
but it is for us because they were in the boys bedroom which is being redone
well guys thanks for coming along leave us some comments below we'd
love to read them and otherwise we'll see you guys next time on the homestead bye
do
you