There are many expensive chick brooders on the market, but for those of us on a budget, let's talk about kiddie pools. A standard 5 ft wide kiddie pool at your local Walmart or Target will cost about $16 and will provide several years of use for chick brooding. They are deep enough to provide a good draft guard and easy to clean and maintain. We place clear plastic on the floor of our barn, line the pools up, put about 3 inches of pine wood shavings in the bottom, hang heat lamps over the top and screw coated chicken wire around the top lip of the pool to provide extra depth as they get older. (Otherwise, they will escape in that 2nd week and you will be chasing them around the barn..... we speak from experience!) Here they are at 2 days old with plenty of room to roam, warm, dry and well protected.
We keep extra bales of bedding and pull out wet dirty bedding every few days while they are little and more often as they get around 2 weeks. The old bedding is great to till in with your Spring garden. As the chicks grow, we slowly raise the heat lamps to get the chicks used to less and less warmth. At about 2 wks, we turn off the heat lamps and start to get them ready to go outside on pasture. Do NOT put your chickens out in pens on pasture until they are fully feathered out! They cannot handle the cooler night temperatures until they have all their feathers to keep warm. You can see the chicks to the right still have a mix of down and feathers. They are not quite ready to go out yet. If you put them out too soon, they will have respiratory issues, they will start to cough and sneeze and they will not eat as much. In many cases, you will have multiple deaths and maybe loose your whole flock. You have made it this far. Don't push them outside to early and ruin all your time and effort feeding and taking care of them now. It is better to wait a few days or even a week if you aren't sure. Another thing to wait for is a few days of mild weather. Don't put new chicks (even fully feathered) outside on the day you have an all day thunderstorm. Wait until the weather looks like it will be clear a few days, then put them out.
I usually know it is time when they have all their feathers and they start to stick their heads over the lip of the kiddie pool. You can tell they are tired of being cooped up and ready to escape! Then, it is time to move them outside, rinse out the kiddie pools and store them for the next batch we brood! We have had wonderful luck using these pools over and over again.