Show A HOME FOR YOUR YOUK CHICKS when you have made arrangements for a good quality ot of baby chicks to start off your flocks with you will want to get busy bury on a suitable home for them if you are going to have any number of chicks you will need some kind of a brooder house and brooder for them almost any kind of a room or building can be improvised into a nice brooding house or a suitable one can be built tor for little cost it if you are going to plan to have one thousand layers in your flock in the fall you will want to get about twenty five hundred chicks for this number you will want a floor space in your brooder house about 20 feet by 60 feet giving you an area of about 1200 square feet the same proportions apply if you are getting a smaller or larger number of chicks about 60 square feet of floor space being required for each one hundred chicks this brooder house will be the head bead quarters tor for your chicks as they grow up and all d until you send the cockerels cockerell cocker els oft off to m market arket and put the pullets into the laying 1 ng houses the main thing in planning your brooder house Is to have it warm and snug lor for the chicks and to have it absolutely free or of dampness a an and d 0 of f draft see that the roof does docs not no t leak it is a good idea to have a double construction floor and to have every little crevice up ray eay at least a 0 foot and a halt half from the floor carefully plugged up as a current of cold air coming into the house at the floor door might chin chill a and nd kill your entire brood while a human being might not even notice it on the other hand you want to have the brooder house high enough so that you can stand up and walk around in it in comfort while attending to the chicks this will give them the air space that they should have for their own health important sanitation can make you or break you try to move or build your brooder house on clean ground that has not been used for poultry for the past three years if this Is not possible bring in some ground that it clean and fu fill I 1 in for 20 feet around the brooder bloode r house to a depth of about 4 inches als also 0 clean your brooder house like you yet would a surgical laboratory remove every trace of dirt and old utter litter dry clean thoroughly and scrub with hot water and some high powered coal tar disinfectant you must destroy those parasites and germs next week we will tell about equipping the brooder house bouse and getting it reedy for the first brood of baby chicks |