There’s nothing quite like the excitement of hatch day. One minute, you’re watching tiny eggs wobble and crack, the next you’ve got a handful of wet, squeaky dinosaurs stumbling around like drunk toddlers.

But here’s the part everyone forgets in their egg-hatching euphoria: these fluff nuggets actually need somewhere to live the second they’re out of the shell. That’s where the brooder comes in.

Now, before you panic—setting up a brooder isn’t complicated. But if you skip the basics? You’ll have dead chicks, fried chicks, or an entire brooder that smells like a barnyard exploded in your living room. So let’s walk through it step by step, with the honesty you won’t get in a Pinterest-perfect “brooder inspo” pin.

Step 1: Selecting the Brooder

Rule #1: Keep chicks in. Keep pets and curious toddlers out.

Your brooder can be as simple or as fancy as you want. I’ve seen people buy high-dollar setups, DIY from scrap wood, use totes, fish tanks, even cardboard boxes (Don’t. Unless you enjoy soggy, collapsing chaos.)

The container doesn’t matter as much as your comfort with the material and heat source. I built mine from plywood and hardware cloth, framed it with 2×2s, and added hinged tops for easy access. Solid, safe, and no midnight panic attacks about starting a fire.

Other options people use:

• Tote with a hole cut out of the top, covered in hardware cloth.

• Store-bought brooders (pricey, but plug-and-play).

• Cardboard box (again, just don’t—water spills + cardboard = disaster).

💡 Pro Tip: If you’re using cardboard or wood bottoms, line them with plastic before bedding. Chicks are Olympic-level water spillers. You’ll thank me later.

How Big Should It Be?

• Chickens: 1 square foot 1 chicks, 2 feet tall sides. This keeps them comfy until 6–8 weeks old.

• Quail: 6 chicks per square foot, 1-foot-high sides. They don’t need skyscrapers; they’re out by 2 weeks anyway.

⚠️ Don’t go higher than 2 feet. It makes catching runaway chicks a full-on rodeo.

Step 2: Bedding

This is where you separate “cute baby chick smell” from “what died in here.”

What NOT to use:

• Cedar has too strong of a smell for chicks. Especially in small and enclosed areas. 

• Pine’s a better choice but can still be a bit dusty. If you choose pine, make sure to get flakes, not dust. Quail chicks like to eat the dust, which they aren’t able to digest correctly. This often causes them to die. 3

   

(For minimizing quail chick deaths, read my blog How to Limit Quail Chick Fatalities.)

What works:

• Pine flakes: Safe, affordable, reliable.

• Shop paper towels (affiliate link): Better grip than kitchen paper towels = fewer splayed legs. But beware—quail poop so much you’ll be swapping them constantly.

• Pee pads: Okay for small hatches, but you’ll be changing them nonstop with larger groups.

• Sand: Skip it. Gets way too hot under lamps and can burn little feet.

I swear by the deep litter method with pine shavings. Stir every couple of days, and with quail you’ll need to help because they’re too tiny to fluff it themselves. I could easily go two weeks before it needed a full change-out. Smell = handled.

Step 3: Waterers and Feeders

Chicks are messy little gremlins. Their favorite trick? Pooping exactly where they eat and drink.

• On paper towels? Regular feeders/waterers are fine—until poop builds up around the rims.

• On pine shavings? Elevate everything. Either buy feeders/waterers with legs or DIY it with wood blocks.

For quail, add rocks or marbles to the rim of a chicken waterer. Otherwise, they’ll try to swim in it, get stuck, and drown. Yes, really. They are that reckless.

I personally raise quail, so I put food and water up on scrap 2×3s. It cuts down on the junk that gets kicked in and gives chicks a little platform to hop on.

Step 4: Heat Source

This is where the real stress begins. Chicks need warmth, but heating can be a balancing act between “cozy” and “roast chicken special.”

Options:

• Heat lamps: Cheap, common, but risky. They’re notorious for fires. Also hard to adjust—raise an inch, too cold; lower an inch, too hot.

  • I solved this with a pulley system. Total lifesaver.

  • Waxed string with loops works too for fine adjustments.

• Heating plates: Mimic mama hen, safer, but some say they don’t get hot enough for quail. I’m trying them next hatch—bonus points for the silly “comfort feathers” that make chicks feel like they’re under mom.

• Then there is this and this (affiliate links). This lamp is highly recommended by people who regularly hatch large amounts of chicks.

Temperature Guide

• Start: 99.5°F for both chickens and quail. Quail can handle up to 99.9°F with airflow, but don’t push it.

• Chickens: Drop 5°F each week until 6 weeks old. If it’s cold where you live, keep them inside until 8 weeks.

• Quail: Drop 5°F after the first week then every couple of days. By 10 days they’re nearly feathered and don’t need the lamp. Mine usually move out at 2 weeks unless it’s dipping below 40°F, then I keep them in until 4.

Test your setup 24 hours before moving chicks in. Heat sources need time to stabilize, and nothing ruins hatch day like frying or freezing your new babies. 

Heating sources often takes several hours for the temperature to stabilize. I like to give it a full 24 hours to be sure. To check, the best thermometer is the Govee (affiliate link).

(If you want to learn how to move quail outside, read my article: How to Safely Move Juvenile Quail Outside.)

Final Thoughts

Brooders don’t need to be fancy. They need to be:

• Secure (keep kids/pets out, chicks in)

• Safe (no fire hazards)

• Warm (but not roasting)

• Functional (easy to clean and maintain)

That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it. Your chicks don’t care if they’re in a designer brooder or a tote from Walmart—they just want heat, food, water, and a safe spot to poop their body weight every day.

Set it up right, and you’ll go from “terrified new chick parent” to “chaos manager” in no time. And hey—once you survive brooder duty, the rest of chicken (or quail) raising feels like a breeze.

Welcome to the madness.