BUILDING AN ELECTRICITY FREE CHICK BROODER! Preparing for chicks to come to our offgrid homestead

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Living the Hight Life • Homesteading with Rabbits

2 жыл бұрын

#coldbroodingchicks #offgridhomestead #raisingchicksoffgrid
We have 80 chicks coming to our offgrid homestead, and we have to start getting prepared. But, how do you brood chicks without electricity?
I started researching this question and found a few mentions of cold brooding chicks. I have found our as much as I can about it, and we are going to give it a try!
If you want to learn how to raise chicks without electricity, how to build an offgrid brooder, and what cold brooding is, make sure you watch this video!
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Пікірлер: 41

@MudRange 2 жыл бұрын

Nice video!!!! Good job!!

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@plansimplifysave1044 2 жыл бұрын

Look at dollar tree or lowes for kids gardening gloves. They make them.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

I haven't checked dollar tree yet! I will look there tomorrow

@FromtheRootsUp 2 жыл бұрын

Looking forward to seeing how this process works for you!

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Me too 😆 I have high hopes for it though and will make sure to document everything!

@robbielynnhowlethehomestea8761 2 жыл бұрын

Great idea! I’ve never seen this done. Sounds like a good plan though. 👍🏻😊.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you! I'm hoping to keep good documentation of it, so we can see how well it works

@jeanne612 2 жыл бұрын

Rubber hot water bottles are a great idea and feather dusters from the dollar tree ...hang them upside down from the top..so the chick's can snuggle under them..its like a "fake momma chicken" lol I saw that on Fy Nyth youtube channel...she raises chickens off grid in the Wyoming mountains.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

I had thought of the rubber hot water bottles, but I am worried they will be impossible to keep clean. I will have to check out their channel and see how they do it. Thanks for letting me know about them!

@sparrowgarden1401 2 жыл бұрын

I went to the Dollar Tree to get such a feather duster today, but they did not have any. I am using a stuffed toy bunny that I bought many years ago. I can prop it up on it's legs and the chicks can get under it and climb on top of it. this bunny has been surrogate mom to many chicks, ducklings, kittens and puppies.

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

Let me figure.....10 days for the chicks to arrive, 2 weeks in the brooder - You're going to need a chicken yard pretty darned soon.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Yes we are! Thankfully Kenneth has been spending the evenings while I cook dinner clearing an opening to start running the chickens in. We have a lot of work to do still though!

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

Heavily edit your chickens' work in progress so Noone can have proof of complaint.....you guys aren't near as cold as we are. We still have ice crusted snow on the front windshield of the truck from Monday night; and we don't generally get much for snow.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Yes, I plan to do a pretty in depth video series on it. I have never seen a really good video on raising chickens without electricity, so I am hoping to cover that for people

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

In the back of your mind ... Im catching that while more old school, folks are isolating thier broody hens in what I will call a "broody box" away from the general flock's access. A box or space with nesting material, food, and water. Most havent said much but one hand cleans the broody hen a couple of times in a 24 hour period.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

I have heard a lot about a broody box, but I also know some people use an UNbroody box to isolate the hen from a nest if they don't want her to be broody. It can be really difficult to sift through information and find the best way to do it.

@sparrowgarden1401 2 жыл бұрын

I love this! I ended up hatching my chicks earlier than planned because a hawk killed one of my favorite chickens. I had some of her eggs and wanted to hatch them. So I need to figure out how to raise these chicks in this colder weather without needing to keep them in the house for too long. I want my bathtub back! I put in a dozen chicken eggs and 6 duck eggs and it looks like they will all hatch! so I will have plenty of babies.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

That's awesome! It would be so cool to hatch your own eggs. How long until hatch day?

@sparrowgarden1401 2 жыл бұрын

@@LivingtheHightLife It usually takes about 21 days.

@plansimplifysave1044 2 жыл бұрын

You should buy an outdoor thermometer or two to put in the brooder, outside and in the hen boxes. It’d be a cool way to collect data on the experiment. Keep a log book - what time you changed water, temperatures, head counts, food measurements, bedding changes, etc. Then if something goes good or bad you’ve got data to analyze. Plus you can keep track of the overall people time spent maintaining them. I thought about using a rubber old fashion heating pad bag before you mentioned the cans. Good luck! Another thought is to maybe tarp/blanket for an insulation layer if you get a super cold night or set up a piece of plywood for a wind break/heat gap. Chickens didn’t have electric pads in the 1700s and still grew.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Yes, I have thought about doing that. I really think this information can help a lot of people so I will be trying to cover it in depth

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

@@LivingtheHightLife I am following your journey with this cold broader system before passing it along.

@tinataylor2698 2 жыл бұрын

I raised chicks without electricity… used rubber hot water bottles… put paper towels over them so the chicks wouldn’t get burned as heat rises….never lost any and I only had 10 good luck 💜🌻💜

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

That's awesome! I did think about hot water bottles, but I was worried they would be difficult to keep clean if the chicks climbed all over them.

@tinataylor2698 2 жыл бұрын

@@LivingtheHightLife That’s why you wrap paper towels around them so that you can dispose of them when you’re changing the water out chicks are very messy as he will find out very soon

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

We have outfitted 5 to 10 kids in dollar tree tools over the years. Among other things, the tools are real but the sizes and handles are smaller. The youngest we ve outfitted has been barely 2 years of age. The dollar tree level is a goto for all ages.

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

I have always seen tools in the dollar tree,but I have never purchased any of them before. I think they will be perfect for Declan though!

@sparrowgarden1401 2 жыл бұрын

yup, it is a great place to get kids their first real tools. they know the difference! Our granddaughter is a stickler for wanting the real thing, not a toy!

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

@@sparrowgarden1401 I dont know what the heck I was thinking, but by age 2 I would not be consoled by a cordless, toy iron nor would i let my mother iron in the day and age that all work shirts and more needed to be ironed. I got a dry travel iron with a cord and an old, padded sleeve board for my birthday. Within the month, I figured out the cord thing and insisted it be plugged in then began to be responsible for ironing handkerchiefs. It wasn't too long after that I figured out the dial and singed my fingers; it became an "do as I tell you" mother daughter moment. Ironing was a childhood memory maker including the realization that it wasn't as much fun anymore when I moved up to the full sized iron, the lowered full sized ironing board, and parts of my school clothes with that graduation to first grade.

@decoder3449 Жыл бұрын

Any ideas for winter?

@LivingtheHightLife Жыл бұрын

How cold do you get in the winter?

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

You all are probably not ready for this method of preserving honey. I have heard of whipped honey and even remember having seen it in the little plastic bear containers. But, I am passing along this video which discusses the wharves and whys then shows how. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y5Z-f7Ro3cq9iqs.html

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing this video with us! I have never seen this before

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

Will you need to sanitize the tractor between chicks and bunnies?

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

No, we aren't. Because it will have set empty for a month between the two I'm not very worried. Plus the chicks will be on mulch and not the wood slats.

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

I've been seeing a movement towards comingling breeds and species in the same winter hoop house/ shelter and also different renditions of regenerative farming in which one critter takes care of the waste of another. One homesteader had a pig eat a chicken that got too close in the pig pen end of a hoop house; the provided fencing barriers were designed to keep the gigs contained and didn't address the realities of chickens. Multiple utube homesteaders have comingled caged rabbits with chickens; readily addressed have been mostly appearance and rabbit uncomfortableness issues with chickens hanging out on top of the rabbit cages. This video goes into more detail about the internal health problems with cohabitating chickens and rabbits. Im passing it along in case there are health issues you are not aware of. Also, to help reaffirm the decisions you've made related to seperate living quarters for the chickens and rabbits. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oM2ZZ8h12NDRd6M.html

@LivingtheHightLife 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing. I know that Joel Salatin and Daniel Salatin are very popular for their Raken House with rabbits and chickens. We visited it, and I really like the set up of it, but we decided against it.

@terryhenderson424 2 жыл бұрын

I keep to the free stuff and, I havent seen as much about Saltin. I have watched some Justin Rhodes and a few others..... It seems that despite a personal interpretation of a system, the behavior of chickens is to roost; amd pretty much where they chose. Most farm birds seem to have a continual stream of poop where ever they go.