Brothers M. Monday is our way of sharing our excitement  about our chickens.

We still needed more brooder area, but I really didn’t want to dedicate more area to just brooders so I came up with the idea of fold up brooders that hang on the wall.

I made two 2’x4′  hinged brooder boxes. The bottom is hinged to the wall so it folds down, the two sides fold into the floor, and the front is hinged to Fold under the bottom.  The lid had hinge pins so you could take it off and hang it on the folded down brooder or store it someplace else.

To support the front of the folding brooder, I hung chains from the rafters with S hooks on either end to unhook from the brooder and remove from the rafter to store the chains away.

I liked the boxes, but because of their size, they didn’t hold many chicks after I added the feeder and waterer, about 15, 20 max.  Also, I only folded them down when I had to have the space and they stayed up most of the time.

So, I decided to take them out and make a 4×4 in the back corner.  A family member made a similar brooder to this one and gave me the idea.  The idea is that it’s 4’x4’x1′ so you can make it out of one 4×8 sheet.  I made mine a bit taller and added a strip of wire mesh, this was to give me a little more height for waterers and feeders, and I thought I might make more and stack them for transporting the full grown grown chickens, the latter never really panned out.

Even though this makes getting to the back corners of the two brooders in the back of the lean-to, I really prefer this brooder over the 2 hanging brooders.  It worked well this year.