Brand New Brooder

Brand New Brooder. With the wonderful support of our customers we have been selling out of Pasture Raised Chickens very quickly over the past four months.  The only down side is the number of people missing out each month had been steadily growing and we hate to disappoint any customers, so the time came to expand our brooder capacity. The large four bay machinery shed was identified as the best place to build.  We have tank water available and as we are moving to gas brooders, gas bottles will provide the energy to keep them warm.

I have become rather handy when working with framing pine given all of our outdoor shelters have it, so it seemed the best things to use for the walls.  We are always on the lookout for scrap metal sheets to build shelters for our animals and as we have a few in storage, I used those to finish off the walls.

Before screwing in the sheets, I put in some insulation between the walls to make sure they retain the heat in winter and hold out the heat in summer. I built a small header tank with a float valve and connected it to the outside water tank.  I ran some pipe inside the wall and then connected this to the outlet of the header tank.  This is a great way to manage the water pressure out to the drinkers for the chicks.

Above is the finished result with drinkers and the gas brooder suspend from the roof.  The pulley system has been terrific to easily adjust the height of the drinkers as needed and also with managing the heat of the brooder.  Fingers crossed we have more produce available for our customers in the  next couple of months.