Making a brooder for quail
When breeding poultry, brooders are often used - special boxes for keeping young animals. They are used for breeding young birds during the first days after birth. And quails are no exception here. For this reason, a brooder for quails is a very useful thing in the household, provided that the farmer breeds these birds. At the same time, it is not difficult to make a brooder for quail with your own hands. But the one who will make it must follow certain assembly rules.
Quail brooder
What is required from a brooder for young quail
When making a homemade quail brooder, you must first take into account the dimensions of the structure. For example, for one hundred day old chicks, a box is enough, whose area is 0.5 square meters. m. But when they are half a month old, they already need twice as much space. And with the same dimensions of a homemade quail brooder, only 50 babies can fit in it. The rest will have to be transplanted to another similar room. It is for this reason that some farmers make 2-3 spare cages for young growth.
There are a couple more things to consider when assembling a brooder for small quails with your own hands. Firstly, the house in which the kids will live must be kept clean, without this, no care will help. In each box, you need to make a floor of mesh and a pallet for collecting garbage and droppings from the cage. Some people neglect this design detail, believing that it will not be difficult for the farmer to remove excess dirt himself. But experienced poultry farmers do not recommend saving in such matters related to maintenance.
The second issue that you definitely need to think about is ventilation and space heating. And here you must first find out whether the quail will feel comfortable at a temperature in the brooder at a certain level. And this is by no means an idle question: babies of different ages need different temperatures and levels of heating. You can find out to what level to heat the air in the room from the proposed videos. Proper ventilation in the brooder is equally important. If fresh air does not enter it, then the chicks will suffocate very quickly.
Construction and feeding questions
And the first question to be dealt with is what the quail brooder will be made of. Some people alter a wooden box or cardboard box for this purpose. It is also permissible to make a plastic or wooden dwelling for young animals. But a steel structure for growing chicks is definitely not suitable, since the required temperature will not be maintained in it. Of course, after choosing the material, it is necessary to prepare drawings and determine the dimensions of the future quail house.
If we talk about drinkers and feeders, then there are several different options. First, they can be purchased ready-made.But the price may be overpriced in the opinion of many farmers. Secondly, it is permissible to use ordinary bowls or saucers as drinkers and feeders. But they often have to change food and drink, since quails constantly strive to climb there with their feet. Well, the third option is to make the necessary equipment with your own hands. Fortunately, this is not that difficult to do.
Assembling a brooder for quail
The quail brooder has a not too complicated design and it is quite capable of assembling even one who has little experience in such work. You can watch certain videos that explain the whole process in detail. Here you need to understand all the main details, since you will have to make a brooder for quails yourself. First you need to deal with the main structural elements, and then decompose the entire assembly process step by step, then it will be possible to simplify the procedure and make it more understandable.
The first thing that is made is a frame on which the walls, doors and floor will be installed. Following the frame, the floor is prepared and installed. It consists of two segments: a fine mesh and a tray for collecting droppings, then the walls and the lid are screwed on, after which the doors are installed. But the doors must first be assembled and prepared for installation. Next, lighting and heating systems are mounted. At the very end, feeders and drinkers are installed inside, without which it is impossible to start chicks into the brooder.
Frame for quail brooder
First, you need to assemble the frame, on which all other structural elements will already be fixed. It is usually made from sturdy bars or slats that will support the weight of all other elements. If you make a house for 50 chicks, then each plank is made 50 or 60 cm long. Then the room turns out to be cubic. But if you plan to keep babies in a brooder for more than 7-10 days, you will need a brooder that is twice as large. The number of rails required for the frame can be calculated at the beginning.
So, in any case, you will need four vertical slats, 55-60 cm high. Their thickness should be 20-30 mm. The thickness of all other elements of the frame should be exactly the same. Then you will need four horizontal battens 50 cm long. These will hold the vertical posts together. And finally, you need 6 more boards with a length of 0.5 to 1 m, depending on the size of the room: 2 boards are installed in the upper part, for mounting the cover. And 4 are needed at the bottom, a pair on each side, one above the other.
At the bottom, 4 boards are installed so that a pallet can be installed between them. On each side, 2 boards are placed one above the other, a small gap of 2-3 cm is left between them. The whole structure is fastened with screws or self-tapping screws. It is undesirable to use nails or glue, since they are not so convenient in this case. If it is not clear from the description how exactly the brooder should be assembled, then it is worth watching the video available in the application. It will explain the main points of manufacturing.
Walls and lid for brooder
First, the farmer needs to decide what can be used as the walls of a homemade quail house. It should be assumed that the walls of the room will be made of wood. This means that plywood, thin boards, fiberboard or chipboard will be used, although the last 2 materials are not very good in this situation, however, you can resort to neither, in the absence of other alternatives. The walls should be assembled so that there are no holes, crevices or other paths for drafts, because colds are very dangerous for chicks.
It is best to make the walls from solid sheets of plywood, measuring the desired part in such a way that they completely cover the desired area, then they are usually screwed using all the same screws. It must be screwed tightly so that the room comes out warm enough and convenient for maintenance.But even before the walls are installed, the floor mesh must be installed. A fine-mesh mesh is chosen, in which the legs of babies will not get stuck, otherwise injuries will become a real scourge of the poultry farmer.
After installing the floor and walls, the turn of the doors comes. And some farmers prefer to make them not on the side, but on top of the product. In some cases, they do without doors at all, leaving a large opening on top. If the doors are made, then they will require several pieces of boards or 2 sheets of plywood. A kind of frame is made of them, on which the same fine-mesh mesh is fixed. The finished sashes are attached to the frame using steel hinges, which are easy to purchase at any hardware store.
Brooder lighting and heating
The lighting and temperature in the quail brooder is in most cases maintained with infrared lamps. An infrared lamp can be of two types. The first type of lamp emits a red glow. It warms better, but it is not suitable as a light source, since birds do not see in this range of the spectrum. The second type of lamp is called a white lamp and can serve both for heating and lighting at the same time. You can easily combine these 2 types of luminaires.
In the event that the farmer uses red lamps for heating, he will have to install an additional lamp for lighting. And at the same time it is necessary to ensure that it does not raise the temperature above the required level. Excessive heating of the room is harmful to the chicks and is highly undesirable. There is a certain temperature regime that is recommended for quail of any breed. Space heating must be maintained at the following level:
- Chicks up to one week of age are kept at temperatures from 35 to 38 ° C. They are usually kept near a heat source.
- At the age of 1 to 2 weeks, babies need a temperature of 30-33 ° C. Moreover, it should be lowered gradually.
- Up to 3 weeks, chicks are already kept when heated at a level of 25-28 degrees.
- Starting from one month of age, young birds need 20-23 degrees for normal life.
Growing small quails in a brooder should take place at these temperatures. Knowing what temperature babies need, you can adjust it at your discretion. For automatic adjustment, you can purchase a special device, and if you have the necessary skills, you can make it yourself. But the manufacture of such a relay will require, in addition to skills, certain photos and drawings. It is worth noting that it is recommended to use red lamps for heating, since then the chicks grow faster.
Brooder lighting
Separately, you should think about lighting in the place where the chicks are kept. When making a brooder for small quails with your own hands, you need to make or order a lighting system for it. The thing is that these birds are very sensitive to the length of daylight hours. For example, small males, with a sharp reduction in daylight hours, can lose their ability to reproduce. Therefore, the lighting system is usually thought out along with the heating system. But it is quite possible to make it by the farmer himself.
As in the case of heating, here it will be necessary to decide how many pieces of lamps you need to install during the assembly process. Here you need to understand that the average illumination level for quail should be 20-80 lux. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to independently calculate the required illumination level. Farmers recommend using conventional calculators for these purposes. Theoretically, an incandescent lamp with a power of 5-10 W is enough to illuminate the brooder, and more is no longer required. Here's what they write about highlighting on the forums:
“The lighting system for the Sparrowhawk is easy to install. There are even proposals in the style of "give the lamps", but they still need to be able to properly adjust.If you leave constant illumination, then the chicks will not only grow faster, but also become depleted, and if you shorten the daylight hours, then their fertility will decrease in the future. One of the recommended options is considered to be 2 hours of light, 1 hour of darkness. If the chicks get used to this regime, they will grow up normally, while the lamps will not burn out prematurely. "
How to feed the young in a brooder
The main stages have been passed - the room is assembled, lighting and heating have already been installed in it. Now you need to mark the feeder for the babies, as well as put a suitable drinker inside. At first glance, this is the simplest task. The easiest way is to put 2 bowls: one for food, and the other for drinking, but their chicks can turn over very quickly. At the same time, the same chicks are able to spoil both food and water. They will simply crawl inside the dishes and relieve themselves there. And that's all, the food must be changed, because the rest is already unsuitable for further use.
This is why many farmers make a separate feeder for their brooder. And in the same way, homemade drinking devices are used. A simple option is to take a plastic or metal can and make a series of holes in it, into which the chick's beak will crawl through. And in the center there is a large connector for the neck of a plastic bottle. For food, the bottom of the bottle is cut off and the nutrient mixture is poured inside. For a drinker, the bottle is first collected, and then installed without cutting off the bottom.
Conclusion
Of course, making a quail brooder is by no means an easy task, although it does not require special skills, you will have to tinker with the build quality and adjusting the lighting and heating. But with a responsible approach, the assembled room will serve for a long time and bring profit to its owner.