The chick brooder: what it is and how to set it up.

About to welcome chicks into your home? Not sure where to start in terms of making sure they have a safe place to live? This is the article you need!

What exactly is a chick brooder? When do chicks need one, and how long will they need it for? What size should it be, and where's the best place to put it?

All those questions are answered in this article.

Making your own chick brooder is easy and fun.

This article explains how to use an inexpensive, easily available item to create a small homemade chick brooder to house up to 8 chicks post-hatch.

It's both cost-effective and environmentally friendly – you can carry on using it year after year!

Looking for an expandable brooder to meet the changing needs of your growing chicks?

This article explains how to use a puppy pen: critical features to look for, how to set it up, adding bedding, food, treats, roosts and toys, and using it outside.

Re-usable for years, this is the most efficient way to provide a safe home for your baby chickens.

Cold is the one thing more than any other which is sure to kill a newly-hatched chick.

This article examines ideal temperatures to keep baby chicks safe and healthy, and details how that changes week by week. It suggests a simple way to tell whether your chicks are too hot, too cold or just right.

Including a chick brooder temperature chart.

A safe, reliable heat source is a critical part of a chick's first weeks of life. 

This article compares different heat sources and reviews two of the most popular heat lamps.

Discover the pros and cons of each, and read my assessment of which heat lamps are best value for money and safest for your chicks.

Your brooder's set up, your chicks are almost at the point where they can go into it – but which bedding is best?

This article reviews four different types of bedding for use as chicks grow: wood shavings, sand, straw and newspaper.

Find out which is best for your brooder, and which one you should never use.

The final element of setting up your brooder is to make sure your chicks have the best feeders.

Notorious for kicking food out of containers (and bedding in!), there's no point using bowls in the brooder. You'll need a specific chick feeder.

This article reviews four of the best, covering pros, cons and which is the most cost-effective.

You have the feeder in place in your warm, safe brooder. But what should it be filled with?

What exactly do baby chicks eat? Should it be medicated or not? How can we make sure they know what's food and what's bedding? Can they have treats? And is it possible to make our own chick feed?

This article provides all the information you need to make sure your chicks have the very best start in life at this amazingly fast-growing stage.

Food is not the only part of a healthy chick diet: it's also important that they remain hydrated.

How do we make sure that chicks fresh from the incubator or recently delivered by post have enough water? How do we teach them to drink?

And what's the best waterer to use in the brooder to stop the water becoming contaminated with poop and bedding?

This article has it all covered.

Now you have your chick brooder set up with everything a baby chick could need. But when do you move the babies in, and what's the best way to do it?

This article covers everything from when, how to make sure the rest of your hatching eggs are safe as you open the incubator, what to do if your chicks aren't drying properly, and when to first offer food and drink.

There comes a day when chicks need to leave their brooder and move into the outside world. But how to know when that day has arrived?

This article explains how to know when it's time, how to plan to ensure a safe move, how to use a "halfway house" to make the transition easier, and exactly how to the move should take place.

This book by world-renowned poultry expert Gail Damerow will become your go-to source for dealing with baby chicks.

Updated to cover advancements in research and technology, it covers everything you need to know about the processes of incubation, hatch and brooding in easily understandable yet thoroughly researched language.

Keep it by your side whenever you have baby chicks – or even if you just like reading about them!