Urban Chicken houses & DIY Techniques

Oh they are adorable! My husband picked up the chicks this morning. He sent me pictures right away and I couldn’t wait to get home from work to see them!!

Right away I noticed that they like to jump up on on their water dish and go to the bathroom. So we made some adjustments to it and added a cut off 2L bottle upside down. see the pictures below

Our dog isn’t too sure what to think of them. She keeps running out there to check on them (or decide which she wants to eat for dinner lol).

They don’t make a lot of noise. Little chirps Looking at them I think we have 8 males and 17 females. I’ll post more on sexing chickens in another blog

Here they are:

Building your own home chicken brooder is something that you can get done in a day. We spent the better part of Saturday working on the brooder for the chicks. As I mentioned before we used the nesting box that was in the old chicken coop. It was 4′ wide and 2′ deep. The back height was 26″ and the front was 18″ tall, so the lid is slanted forward. In the front there is a 9″ x 12″ hole cut out. The hens used this to get in and out of the nesting box.

First, we cleaned and disinfected the box. I wanted to make sure that the corners in the box were round instead of square. In the numerous things I have read, it says to do this so that the chicks can not smother each other in the corners and kill each other. From what I have been told, chicks tend to try to kill themselves all time. I completed this task by using 2 empty 2L bottles. After I washed these out, I cut the top and the bottom off to make the edges flat. Then I cut them in half, lengthwise. To hold them in place in the brooder, I stapled them into each of the four corners. If you look at the picture you can see what I mean

On the 9”x12″ cut out on the front, I covered the hole with chicken wire and stapled in place. I did this so the chicks would not be able to jump out. For the roosting sticks we took three bamboo sticks (I had these left over from my tomato plants in the garden). I cut these to the length of the box. Then I attached a 4×4 1″ thick piece of wood on each side of the box and attached the bamboo sticks to those. I also used 2 pieces of scrap wood to support the bamboo sticks in the middle. I didn’t attach these to the floor for really only one reason, to make it easier to clean. I can slide newspaper underneath them and I can move them around when the box has to be cleaned.

I used a couple of scrap pieces of 2×6 to raise the water and food dish *see my post on how I made the water and food dish out of items I recycled from around our house*    I’ve done this to raise the dishes off of the wood shavings and to keep them from going to the bathroom in their food and water.

We hung the red heat lamp from the lid and my husband wired it up to a thermostat that we installed inside the brooder. He also installed a light socket and hooked that up to a timer. He is so handy J 

Once everything was in place we covered the bottom in wood shavings. Now it looks like the brooder is all ready for the chicks, we just have to set it to the right temperature. We will leave the heat lamps on for a few days prior to getting the chicks. This should ensure that the brooder is warm enough for them when they arrive.

1 more sleep!

This is the view looking in:

We tried to figure out a way to make a water and food dish out of items that we already had around our house.

For the water dish, I used an empty 4L milk container. I disinfected it and cut the bottom 2 inches off. I filled it to the top with white rocks, because I have read that the number one way chicks kill themselves is by drowning in their water dishes. If you fill the water dish with rocks or marbles then they can not drown themselves as easily. We’ll see if this is true!

For the feeder, we took an empty plastic Rogers coffee container. Along the bottom of it, my husband cut little openings for the feed to come out of.  I bent the plastic tab open so it would act as a stopper for the feed.

Over all it took us about 10 minutes to make both. It was quick, easy and didn’t cost us a thing!

We got the call today that the chicks will be here next Tuesday (June 15). We are so excited. There are a few things that we have to do right away. My Husband has to start building the new coop and I have to start assembling the brooder. From all of the information that I have read I am going to start this task in the next few days. I’ll make sure to take a lot of pictures

We have decided to raise chickens. Simple as that. We’re raising chickens. We have talked about it on and off for the last 2 years and have finally decided to do it. We began to do extensive research on how to accoplish this. My husband would figure out how to build a chicken coop and I would figure out how to raise them We ordered 25 Rhode Island Reds and are now waiting to find out when we can get them

A bit of history on our place. We live on a a few Acres on rural land surrounded by farmers and small towns that don’t even have a good local diner they are that small. There was a chicken coop already here when we moved in, but at the time we decided to turn it into a garden because we had never raised chickens before.

It wasn’t a very nice chicken coop to begin with so we are not losing out on much. It should be noted that we are using parts of the old coop for parts of our new one.

As we go through each step (building the coop,bringing the chicks home, and raising them to collecting their eggs) we will take you along for the ride:)

Keep checking back for updates and feel free to share your chicken raising story and tips too!

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