Tiered Brooder

[Toasty525]

I've grown tired of my on the floor brooder boxes and I'm trying to build a 3 tiered brooder hutch. We have a similar hutch for some quail breeder sets. I've had a hard time finding any info online but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I have seen the Hatching Time Brooders that stack but they are so expensive and I would like wood over plastic. So this is what im thinking. Mesh floors for poop to fall through. Wood along the back, hardware cloth along the sides and front door. Thinking of using either a reptile heat light (like the small ones), or maybe one of those ceramic heat lamp bulbs, or a brooder plate. I'm not a fan of the brooder plates with having to change the height of them and how bulky they are so i'd like to try to use the lamps. I'm thinking of each box to be 24inches tall 2feet wide and 4 feet long. They will be indoors so im not worried about a roof. Thinking of using a flat wood top for each one if i want to hang a feeder. I use the rent a coop waterers so i'll attach it to the side through the wire.

Attached is an image of my quail breeder hutches for refrence.

 

[rosemarythyme]

You didn't clarify but is this new build still for quail or are you switching to chickens?

If chickens I wouldn't have wire floors at all - you don't want birds on the top pooping on ones below, and the wire would be hard on their feet. They should also have substrate they can dig into which further negates the point of the wire floor.

 

[Toasty525]

For both quail and chicken chicks. hatching time and the Q metal stacking brooders all have wire floors. Obviously there will be trays under the wire to catch poop, they won’t just be pooping on one another. They would only be in this for 2-4 weeks before moving to bigger spaces.

 

[Penpal]

My friend's father, back before WW II, used bakery trays. These would be large shelves. If you could find something similar, used, with stainless steel that might be perfect. Very washable.

 

[HeritageFan]

Good timing on your question (for me!) lol

I’m also looking for thoughts on construction of a new (turkey and quail) brooder that I can put into
(and also remove from)
the coop that used to be the duck coop, but, we re homed the ducks so it’s currently available.

I also have quail- Cortunix- and some of my quail pens have solid floors and shavings for substrate, and nesting boxes that actually serve better as mini dust baths (although they do like to lay in there sometimes).
My quail “bachelor” pens have 14g wire floors, 1/2” x 1”, and my excess boys’ feet look really healthy. Although TBTH, I use my surplus of boys for training my bird dog pup, and they don’t stay in that pen too long.

They do have low perches (wood blocks), and mats under their feed and water - so plenty of relief spots when they want to get off the wire floor.
The quail on solid “bases” have the same relief spots.

My quail pen is outside, so, the birds on the wire flooring have a slanted metal base below the wire, so I can just hose it off, collect the manure, and add to my compost pile along w the shavings from the other pens, mixed w other compostable material that I can use to fertilize appropriate plants.

My newly hatched birds always go into an indoor brooder for the first week or so, and move outside as soon as possible / dependent on temps outside. My outdoor brooders are always protected from the wind, and I am a -huge- fan of “mommas heating pad”

I do -not- like heat plates. I’ve seen too many babies get burns when not constantly adjusted - or when babies vary in size.
And. Let’s be real. Life happens.
But the arched shape of the mommas heating pad arrangement lets the babies tuck in to a low spot of they are cold, or move towards a high spot if they are warm, but don’t want to go “out” for more than food and a drink.
And they also like to perch on it as they get a bit older.

I’ll try to find a link. I learned about it here.

It’s much safer than a heat lamp/ light
I do use caged heat lamps for the freshly hatched babies.
But it doesn’t take long before the baby quail and turkeys fly well enough to bump the light and blow out the filament.

W the momma heating pad set up, you have to be careful to make sure that the heat pads you buy don’t have an auto shut off feature, and, I usually put a remote sensor from a cheapie weather station in a low corner so I can monitor temps from inside the house (or you can spend a bit more to monitor from an app- but. If you aren’t home, you can’t fix it sooo unless you typically have someone home while you are away, it may not be worth the stress)

I think my outdoor brooder addition to my available coop will be simple, with a solid bottom, contact paper to keep the wood base dry below the shavings, and a mommas heating pad set up, perhaps w an additional light that I can plug into an outlet that I’ve hooked up to a thermostat (so the thermostat only powers the outlet/ turns on the lamp if it gets too cool)

Happy to brainstorm w you.
I would also be happy to send pix of what I did on my build that was originally intended to be a rabbit hutch, and has now become home to our quail.

I don’t have time to dig up those photos rn so lmk if you are interested and I’ll get back to you.

 

[HeritageFan]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/brooding-with-mama-heating-pad.67728/