Making a Chicken Brooder

One of our objectives for raising chickens is to teach the kids about chickens and responsibility, so we wanted easy access for everyone. At first we only had 6 chicks, so that is what David built the brooder for. I've asked David to give some basic instructions for the process, so without further ado, here's David:

I found this basic design on-line at backyardchickens.com. It looked simple enough and effective. The original guy made his about 7 ft long by 3 ft tall. I thought that was a bit large for only six chickens and I wanted to build this on-the-cheap and wanted to only use one sheet of plywood. A standard sheet of plywood is 8ft x 4ft. With that in mind I made my coop 4ft wide x 2ft deep x 2ft tall.

I bought the wood at Home Depot and they cut the plywood for me, which saved me the hassle of getting out my table saw and also made it easier to haul home since we don't have a truck. I had the guy make the first cut across the width of the board at 2 ft for the base, (2) at 1 ft for the front and back and a last one at 1 ft to make the sides. This left me with a 3x4 piece left over but I have plans for that when I finish the coop.

The cage part is made of 2x2 lumber, just basic pine. I bought 8ft long sticks so most of my cuts were just cutting them in half or the halves in half, I try to make my math easy.

Once the cage was made, I got out my T-50 staple gun and stapled the netting to the outside of the frame.

Lastly, I built a door to fit and screwed on some hinges. The stick on the side was an after thought, I had a four foot stick left and needed a way to mount the light so I just screwed it to the side.

Nothing fancy, what you see is what you get. But for temporary housing it does the job and it only cost about $60.

Have you done any DIY projects recently?

This post was originally published on 5/9/14 @oneincomefamilyliving.blogspot.com. David and I wrote, updated, and transferred it here.