As we started bringing in more birds, hatching and selling I really wanted something where I could have birds separated. Whether that be for a quarantine, “hospital” area, a place to keep ducks and chickens that are off heat but still just a little too small to in with our adults, separate by color to get certain colored pair together for their eggs or if someone was coming to pick up and I didn’t want to have to chase all the birds around to catch just one or two. This project didn’t use as much free and spare parts as our coop did but we still tried to use what we had and come up with better alternatives.
Together we came up with this idea of a raised brooder that had 2 sides but 4 doors, 2 for each section, one door to make changing water and filling food easier and another door to make it easier to clean out and replace bedding.
I also knew I wanted it off the ground to help with air flow, predators, and easy access.
So we started with a frame.
Added walls and a pitched roof to make snow removal easier.
For the bedding side I knew I wanted something to protect the wood “floor” and something that would be easy to clean. I ended up buying rubber matting that is used to cut your own floor mats for your vehicle, it cut smooth, went on easy and for cleaning I scrape what I can out then hose and wash the rest of it with a brush and simple green, so easy!
For the feed and water side, as much as I hate to have birds walk on wire, I know it seems small but we had purchased some call ducks when we first started out who were in all wire, very rusty raised pens and they had horrible cuts and scars on the bottom of their feet. It was a very slow process with lots of time in the bathtub soaking and keeping those feet clean. Needless to say I was a little traumatized and I’m sure the ducks were as well, however I knew it would only be for a short time and they would have access to soft bedding just a few steps away. A big reason I went with the hardware cloth is because food and water won’t build up and get moldy or ruin the wood. When there was a pile starting to build up I would simply rake it out from under the coop and add it to the compost pile. We did hardware cloth on the doors as well, also to help with airflow and I wanted to be able to see in without opening the doors but also for the ducks or chickens to be able to look out.
For the roof we had a local lumber place cut is a couple pieces of blue metal roofing to match the roofing over our feeders in the run
This project cost almost as much as our whole coop and run set up but I knew how I wanted it built and other raised hutches or brooders I found in our area either weren’t set up how I wanted or it would cost just as much to fix them and make them right than it was to just build what we wanted from the start.
This has been an excellent brooder for us and has really lasted, just add a little stain every few years and it continues to look new!
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