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Build Chicken Coops and Poultry Brooders

No poultry topic seems to attract as much interest as housing -- chicken coops. No topic is more important than chick brooders. So I'll get you started on both topics.

There was a saying in the old days, "The best chicks come out of the sorriest houses." This is because farmers have a tendency to button up the houses too tight, leaving them under-ventilated. You want ventilation, but not because the house is coming apart at the seams.

Chicken housing can be cheap or expensive. If you're interested in gracious country living, then by all means build a chicken mansion, if that's what you like. My goal, though, is to have chicken coops that last forever but can be built very quickly. I have a lot of them. Any chicken house looks pretty good if it's off in a nice green pasture.

Chicken coops are a traditional first project for people who don't know anything about carpentry, so if you don't know anything what you're doing, poultry housing is the place to start.

Chicken Coops

Cattle Panel Hoop Coop

Read this article on chicken coops that I wrote for ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas). It talks about all kinds of chicken coops, including "chicken tractors" (portable pasture pens).

More Chicken Coop Construction Info.

Baby Chick Brooders

Insulated Pasture Hovers

Click here to read about our new unheated pasture hover that uses the chicks' own body heat to keep them warm. This allows chicks to be moved to unheated houses earlier. This is an old idea, but I invented the version that uses reflective bubble insulation, which is easy to use and very lightweight.
 

Infrared Lamp Brooder

Brood 250 chicks in sub-freezing temperatures with only two heat lamps! This simple project takes only two hours to build and costs around $30. The brooder is made from a sheet of thin plywood, insulated with a layer of wood shavings. Two porcelain lamp sockets hold heat lamps that lie horizontally. We have three of these brooders and they really work! Our chicks were warmer and we saved over $100 in electric bills. This link takes you to a copy of the original Ohio Experiment Station bulletin describing the brooder.

More Baby Chick Care Info.

Questions? Comments? Send Me an Email.

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