Easy Clean Chick Brooder

I came across this interesting brooder design and reached out to father-daughter DIY duo Mick and Mandy, to ask if they’d like their project to be featured in my cool coop build series. Technically it’s not a coop, but I thought it was a good design and a sweet story. Stay tuned for an upcoming post about their current build, a coop to house their Silkie breeding birds. It’s rumoured to be a poultry palace.

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We started with six chickens in 2017 and at that time built our first coop. We ended up putting that video on Youtube, which went viral. Around the same time my husband really wanted a rooster, but we had a neighbor that wasn’t too fond of listening to him everyday, so we had to give him away. At the end of 2020, we moved to a new home that has a little more privacy and it has allowed us to get more chickens and roosters. 

We now have two Rhode Island Reds, two white Plymouth Rocks, two Marans, two Olive Eggers, three Ameracaunas and three Polish hens. We just recently purchased 60 Silkies, which are hard to come by where we live. We’ve had to drive pretty far to purchase them in the past, so we decided to try breeding and selling them ourselves. 

My dad has a passion for building and for as long as I can remember we’ve done projects together. Growing up, there was always a room being renovated, walls being painted, birdhouses being built. After my husband and I moved into our new home my Dad and I have worked on renovating the kitchen, laying new flooring, and building a home library. When we moved, we put the very first chicken coop we built in the back of our truck and moved it to our new property.

Then in February of 2023, on a very windy day, a large pine tree fell directly on our chicken coop. It unfortunately killed three of our hens and destroyed their home. While it was still quite cold and snowing, we quickly built a new chicken coop that was a bit bigger and allowed us to install a better water system. Now that my dad is retired and I can help as much as I can on the weekends, our next project after this brooder we just built will be building another new coop specifically for these Silkies. 

After raising baby chicks a few times using Rubbermaid plastic bins and a zippered playpen from Amazon, we really wanted a brooder that was bigger that we can continue to use.  We wanted something that was easy to clean, allowed for an efficient self-watering system and a refillable feeder that would last 5-7 days. Right now, the two 2’x8’ brooders are located in our basement. We would never be able to move the whole piece, but it’s made to be able to take the entire top off of the base just in case we wanted to move it into our garage.

We did a lot of research, looked at brooders other people built and tried to come up with a system that worked best for us. So far, what we have found to be the best part about these brooder boxes is the dust collection system. To clean out these boxes is a breeze. We simply open the “gate” in the middle of the two boxes to herd all of the chicks into the empty/unused brooder box. Once they are all in, we close the gate. Then we have somewhat of a “trap door” that lifts up in the middle of the brooder box floor. Lifting this will reveal a 4” hose connected to a dust collection system/vacuum. Once it’s turned on we take a handheld broom and brush all of the dirty pine shavings down the hole.

My dad and I worked on this brooder over the course of a weekend. It cost $250 to build this, using a lot of reclaimed wood. 

Two brooders: 2’x8’ for a total of 32 square feet.

Features

• Gravity fed water system
• Two large refillable feeding boxes with a spray painted rooster on the side
• The ability to close off or use both brooder boxes simply by sliding a gate in the middle.
• Easy cleaning because we can herd all of the birds into one brooder, close the gate and use our cyclone dust separator to vacuum the brooder. Cleaning takes about four minutes.
• The lids on the two brooder boxes lift up independently and allow unobstructed access simply by latching the handles to a hook on the ceiling. 

Plans for the future

This year we want to raise Silkies as a business as we have a hard time finding sellers in our area. Next year we also hope to be able to focus more on the landscaping around the chicken coop and expand their run. We have not decided if we are going to purchase a pre-fab run or build something ourselves. We do have a lot of hawks, bears etc. that we need to take into consideration when building something predator proof. The time commitment also needs to be taken into consideration as we’re stretched pretty thin. This is a full time job for my dad now that he’s retired, but I can only put in hours on my evenings and weekends. 

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Check out the step-by-step instructional video from their YouTube Channel The_ Project_Dreamers 

Many thanks to Mick and Mandy for sharing their story, photos and video, used with permission.