setup for cornish x

[SmokinChick]

Why is your brooder bigger then the tractor? Any reason or just the way it worked out. 32 square feet for 18 birds is close with food and water. But like you said, if moved several times a day, its all good.

 

[heavygear88]

ok so i went ahead and ordered 25 cornish x straight run chicks. i changed my setup and built a hoop house out of 1/2 in pvc. its 10x10 half is chicken wire and half is a poly tarp. the hoop house is a tractor that i can move around my garden and fully enclosed. the only predator im worried about is hawks so the chicken wire will suffice with protection. i also ordered me a brinsea ecoglow brooder. the only problem is that the area im going to be keeping the brooder is not climate controlled so im solely relying on the brooder to maintain the temperature with no added help. any suggestions on getting these chicks off to a good start this winter.

 

[Life is Good!]

I am totally enamoured with our Ecoglow! That thing is completely amazing! Our chicks huddle under it then dash out to eat and return to snuggle up for some sleepy-time. It's fascinating to watch them - better than water-bugs on a lake!

If you're concerned about weather - and not planning on moving the tractor part often for the first week or two - take bales of straw and place around the outside of the tractor/hoop house - it'll add a layer of protection against elements. Now, this will take a bunch of bales - so it's not practical for everyone. But it does keep the drafts down considerably.

The other thing that keeps drafts down is plywood sheets - I've placed a full sheet of ply against the side of our PVC 'tractor' and the birds really seemed to appreciate the lack of draft from that direction....all heaped up against that side of the tractor snoozing peacefully with full crops.

Truthfully, a hawk won't be able to take a full-sized CX, so after about 6wks, they could have more space out in the open. But they'll do very well in something that size.

Enjoy 'em!

(edited to add: a plus for the bales of straw - they can be used as winter mulch once the chickens are in Camp Frigidaire! Although our bales of straw two years ago had too many seed heads in 'em, and we had a nice mini-crop of wheat that summer! Bah!)

 

[daddykirbs]

Here are a couple of videos that I made of my setup for my meat chickens.

This one shows the stock tank brooder.


This one shows the run on the back of the shed with the chicken door installed.


We did 20 chicks the first time and this time 30. We took the chicks out of the brooder at 3 weeks of age. I'm confident that I could raise 40-50 in this stock tank brooder and easily that many in this coop/run setup.

 

[heavygear88]

as far as the brooder is concerned i would love to do the stock tank but there just too darn expensive. so i think im going with a huge cardboard box at least this go round. and as far as the bales of hay i think im going to use the hay once there about 3 weeks old just to give them a little draft protection. i know the chickens can survive the cold but with hoop houses its pretty open and the thing im concerned about is the strong winter winds. but i think a few bales of hay will give them a place to get out of the wind ( appreciate the ideas thank you keep em coming, my setups getting better and better thanks to yaw)

 

[heavygear88]

also i had heard so many good things about the ecoglo i just had to have one. i know its sized for 20 chicks but im curious to whether it will handle my 25 thats really my big concern.

 

[wyoDreamer]

They now have an EcoGlo for 50 chicks.

 

[heavygear88]

yeah i looked at the ecoglow 50, however, i didnt really want to spend the extra money for just 5 chicks. if i can get away with the extra 5 for 2-3 weeks i should be fine. in my opinion i think the first 2-3 weeks are the most crucial as far as temperature is concerned. when i started the 5 that i have now (rir and barred rocks) they werent even fully feathered when i stuck them out in the coop and we were already getting frost at night, and i had no problems at all. i have found that chicks figure out the survival thing pretty quick, that in order to stay warm you need to huddle up. and those chicks were around 4 weeks old. so if you do things by the book at 4 weeks the temperature in the brooder should be, what close to 80 or something around there. well i stuck mine outside and the temperatures were easily in the 40s at night and they all made it pretty well. now i know at 4-5 weeks the cornish x are probably not going to all fit underneath the ecoglo. my big concern with them is to avoid the piling up that tends to kill this breed and i think that the ecoglow is gonna serve that purpose well. if they dont quite fit they will still be able to get heat from huddling next to their brother or sister and keep warm vs a heat lamp where if they cant get under the light they will just pile up to get under it. but i guess we will just have to see.

 

[CarriageStone]

Whereabouts in Virginia are you, HeavyGear? If you're near Glen Allen, I could show you our set up. We use stock tanks as the brooder for the first couple of weeks and then move them into a mobile tractor. We built our tractor so that it could easily be tken down and stored when not in use. The tractor is 6'x10' and finished 50 eight week old CX's the last batch.

 

[milleryardchx]

We moved our cornishx to our 1/2 acre pen. They are having fun chasing down bugs. They are much more active than most people say they are at least this batch is.