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The night before our chicks were due to arrive, Dave and I stood in the messy garage, looking around and hoping to find something or other that would make a good brooder for our new flock. We’d known the chicks were coming for weeks, so we probably should have figured this out before the night before, but we did not.

Last time we had chicks, we kept them in a cardboard box and eventually cut up a second box to expand the area as they grew. And, really, this worked fine except for the part where it was hard to keep the top securely covered. We put a window screen, weighted down at the corners with books, on the top, and that was good enough to keep the chicks in, but it couldn’t be trusted to keep other animals out. And, indeed, we lost a chick to our cat Athena (subsequently nicknamed “Murder Kitty”). We definitely didn’t want a repeat of THAT, so we were hoping to come up with something better.

And then I spotted the long forgotten corner cabinet that we took down in our kitchen a few years ago.

I guess we saved this with vague plans to eventually use it for garage storage, but then we just kept piling stuff in disorganized piles all over the place in the garage instead, leaving this cabinet free to become a brooder.

Since this happens to be a weird corner cabinet, it’s a good bit taller than an ordinary cabinet, but an ordinary cabinet would work just fine; chicks aren’t very tall! You might not have a cabinet sitting unused in your garage like we did, but people often need to get rid of them, so if you plan more than a day in advance you can likely find one.

The process for turning this into a brooder was super simple. We took the door out and used a jigsaw to cut out the wood panels:

And then stapled hardware cloth (which we had left over from making our chicken coop; here it is on Amazon if you don’t have any around) to the inside of the door to keep chicks, light, and air in and cats and dogs out.

If all you need is to keep chicks in, you can get away with something less heavy duty.

And that’s it!

I wish we could have used it the opposite way, so that the door opened up instead of down, since it’s kind of in the way when it’s open, but the door wouldn’t stay open that way.

We cut a piece of cardboard to fit in the bottom, so we can just lift it out to switch out and put in clean shavings.

We’re keeping it up in our bedroom for now. We have a ton of space in there, and it’s easy for everyone to visit the chicks frequently. Which we like because we want very friendly chickens. Here’s what it looks like when I forget to clear off the top for photography purposes:

Here’s what it looks like when the chicks have just arrived and are trying out their brooder for the first time:

Here’s some chick playtime outside the box:

And a word about how we have it set up inside, because I’m very happy with it. It should be big enough for all the chicks until they’re old enough to go outside. Our last batch stayed in the brooder a ridiculously long time since we got them in winter; but these girls should be able to be out full time by 5 or 6 weeks, depending on the nighttime temperatures.

For the most part, this is a pretty standard chick set up. There’s a waterer, feeder, and shavings. But the thing that’s new to us and that I’m so pleased with is this heater from RentACoop.

The first two times we had chicks we used a regular old heat lamp with a red bulb. This is the cheapest way to do things and probably the most common, but then I read a lot of scary stuff about how the bulbs get super hot and occasionally have been known to start fires. I did not want our chicks nor our house to burn up, so the next time we raised chicks we got this more expensive but less dangerous heater. The problem with this one, though, was that it stands upright, and I felt like the chicks spent an awful lot of time huddled up against it when they were tiny. They didn’t really seem as comfortable in the brooder as I wanted them to. It seems like people use that one more frequently as a coop heater for grown up chickens; we still keep ours around for that.

So this time we went with a slightly MORE expensive option, still, but I think it was totally worth it. The chicks seem so happy! The idea with this heater is that it replicates the experience of having a mother hen to keep chicks warm. They all go under there to sleep and keep warm and then venture out to eat and drink and explore and poop on the top of it (you can buy a cone attachment to keep them from pooping on the top of it, but ours love sitting on top of it so much (and it gives them more space to use in the brooder) that we just clean it off periodically so they can have their fun.

The legs are adjustable so you can start it out super low so the tiny girls can get close to the heat then gradually raise it up as they get older and don’t need to stay as warm. You know you have the height right is the chicks are quiet (quiet chicks are happy chicks), don’t avoid going under the heater, but also don’t stay under there all the time. Our chicks are right in our bedroom, remember, but they are SO QUIET all night long. Happy chicks!

One downside is you don’t get to watch them sleep since they’re doing it out of sight under the heater, but sometimes I stick my phone down there and take a blurry picture:

There are different sizes you can get depending on how many chicks you have. Anyway, we’re very happy with ours–highly recommended!

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