How to Build an Ohio Brooder

In our current production system, we could only brood 125 chicks at a time.  That's all our brooder (an 8 foot stocktank in our garage) would hold.

And while the stocktank/garage set-up worked fine, it was the limiting factor in our operation.  In Holistic Management terms, our "weak link".

This year we needed a different brooder and place to brood.  We have empty grain bins, we could use them for the structure.  But how do we keep a tall grain bin warm on the bottom three inches for young chicks??

A little research...

And enter the Ohio Brooder!

Developed in the 1940's at Ohio State University, it's been around a while and stood the test of time.  And when we read the specifics, we thought "Genius!!".

Because I'm the woodworker in the family, I set out on a sunny afternoon to build one.

(I used this information as my guide:  Ohio Brooder)

First, I gathered my materials.  All found in our scrap wood pile.

For a 4 foot by 6 foot brooder, you will need:

-4 legs 2x2x16"

-2 cleats 2x2x69"

-3 cleats 2x2x45"

-2 ends 12"x4' of plywood

-2 sides 12"x6' of plywood

-top 4'x6'

Then I gathered my tools:

wood screws - short and long, cordless drill, jig saw or circular saw, pen, tape measure, straight edge

I had a helper with the tape measure.  I did have to convince her to let me have the end with the case...

4 2x2 legs cut to 16 inches.  

3 cleats cut to 45 inches.

2 cleats cut to 69 inches.

I had to piece together my top so I cut a 2foot x 4 foot piece and a 4 foot by 4 foot piece.  You will have to notch the corners on these pieces, but we'll get to that.

Then I cut my plywood sides.  My plywood sheets were 8 feet long but only 20 inches wide.  So I skimped on the 6 foot sides and made them only 10 inches tall.

 

There's the big pieces!  And my jigsaw, I love that thing!

Now to start construction!

 Line up a 16" leg piece with the top and side of a 4' end piece. 

 I used three short screws to fasten them together.  Do what ever floats your boat.

And then repeat for the right side.

 Then I measured 4" down from the top to put on the 45" cleat.

I used a long screw to attach it from the end first on both sides.

 Then I flipped it over and measured down 4" again, this time as a guide as to where the cleat was so I wouldn't miss it!  I used 5 short screws.

Last step, I found the middle of the piece (24") and measured 3" up from the bottom of the plywood to mark where the light fixture will go.

Ta-Da!!  One end wall complete.  Now, make another one!

 When you have them both done, we will attach the 69" side cleats.  I set it up like this so I could screw it together without an extra set of hands to hold the first two pieces.  If you have an extra set of hands, by all means use them!

You'll want to use long screws as you're going through plywood and a 2x2 to get to the side cleat.

The brooder frame! (or a bed frame)

Then the kids got up from their nap and came outside...without pants, but not without cowboy boots.

Now I had an extra set of hands to steady the brooder while I attached the 6' side panels with short screws.

 Now we'll attach the top.  But first we need to make some notches to accommodate the 2x2 legs. 

{Yes, I know there are staples there.  Yes, I know you shouldn't cut into wood with staples in it.  Remove the staples before cutting.  There is your safety message for the day.}

And there you have it!

 And the top pieces slide in perfectly!

Because I had to piece the top,

I had this gap appear.  Gaps are not good when trying to keep heat in.

The remedy to the gap is that third 45" cleat we cut.  I bet you thought I forgot about that one, didn't you!

Now it's strong enough for a toddler dance party!

(If you've taken any notice of Kiddo1's clothing, you may think that it took me 4 days to build this thing.  Wrong, it only took me an afternoon.  But she changed clothes 4 times that afternoon!)

There, all the wood pieces are assembled. 

 Now it's time for some simple wiring.  Hubby found this mess in the shed.

Thanks to my Ag Ed instructor, I have wiring knowledge.  So I cleaned up the fixtures and pulled off the wiring and boxes we didn't need.

 I didn't have to add a plug, but checked to make sure it was attached properly.

We grabbed a couple of bulbs to make sure it worked.  Always a good thing to do before fastening something...

And then attached the fixtures, centering them on the pre-marked locations.  Also, we won't be using just plain bulbs (those were just to test it).  We'll be using 150 watt and 250 watt heat lamb bulbs.

Then I pulled the wiring tight and used plastic staples to attach it to the brooder.

 What makes the Ohio Brooder so great??

The heat produced by the bulbs stays close to the floor, rather than moving up to the top of the grain bin.  It's very inefficient to heat a grain bin from the top down!

It keeps the chicks/poults warm and toasty, providing them a similar environment to their mothers wings for the first few days.  These are the new turkeys that arrived today!

As they get older, they won't need as much warmth so we'll move the food and water out from the brooder and place it just outside the 4" gap.  That way the chicks/poults will be able to move in and out of the heated space to their food and water.  Just like they would with their mothers!

{Do you see a peeking girl?  The poults do!}

We loved the simplicity and common-sense nature of the Ohio Brooder.  And we especially loved the price!  We used scrap wood and found electric supplies.  So for just the price of a few screws and a few hours, we've got a fantastic brooder.  

The 4'x6' size I built will hold 250-300 chicks.  Right now there's 25 turkeys but 125 chicks are coming in two days to join them.  The smaller 4'x4' version would be built the same way and would accommodate up to 250 chicks.

The Changing Face of our Farm

For the past four years, we've been a vegetable farm.  And we also did pastured poultry and eggs.

This year, we're a grass-based meats farm and we also do vegetables.

Why the change?

Hubby and I had a crisis of philosophy in the gardens last summer.  Here we were providing 20 families with fresh produce every week for 15 weeks (end of June through first of October).  What did our members do come the middle of October?  How were they going to eat locally then?  What could we do to address that need?

As I've mentioned before, I'm a huge canner.  I love to can.  I love to teach people to can.  In our current production system, I wasn't getting enough for our family to can the quantities we wanted and I couldn't provide canning quantities to our customers.

This problem changed the course of our farm.  

We are not doing our vegetable CSA this year.  Not because we didn't love it, but because we don't think it's the solution to a year round local diet.

Enter in 2012 and The Canning Garden!

I only have one customer this year (that's all Hubby would let me have, and we all know he's the voice of reason around here).  She gave me a list in February of all the food she wants to have on her pantry shelves and in her cool storage.  (for example:  20 quarts of beans, 10 pints of beets, 10 butternut squash, etc.)  I translated that to row feet and am growing those quantities of those foods for her.  When they're ripe, I'll give her a call and she can have 2 bushels of green beans to can up or freeze or dehydrate...whatever method of food preservation rings her bell.  In short, I'm contract growing canning quantities of fresh, local produce.

I must admit, it's pretty exciting to work on a longer term solution to the how-to-eat-local-in-ND problem and still have the personal connection to our customers that we love.

This is one of our gardens ready for seed.  We've planted some early crops:  some peas, lettuce, chard, spinach, beets.  Potatoes will go in soon.  Onions after that.  

It is just a small step this year, but I believe an important one.  It always starts with one!

{I'd welcome your feedback on this idea!  Leave a comment, if you'd like to share your thoughts.}

Little One

We have three children.  They are a lot alike and also very different.  One thing Hubby and I have noticed with Kiddo3 is that her milestones kind of sneak up on us.  With our first child, we eagerly watched and waited and cheered on the "almosts".  But with the third, she catches us by surprise, "Oh my goodness, did you know she could climb up on the table??"

She's always caught us by surprise, the best surprises! 

Kiddo3 was the happiest baby of the three.  Only cried when she was hungry or poopy.  Made life pretty easy on her Mama.

See?  Even when tortured with stickers, still a smile on her face.

Her big blue eyes and curly red hair usually catch your eye first.  But then her sweetness takes over.

Even when things aren't going her way, she doesn't stay upset for long.

Hubby has already identified that she has a pretty unique sense of humor.  This is how she plays peek-a-boo.  Always has, probably always will.

And then there are times when she gets herself into positions like this and we, her parents, wonder "Really??!!  How??"

Then she sees us and offers a friendly wave.

She loves to play with her brother and sister.  Sometimes she doesn't know that she has a starring role in their latest game.  One day we had told the kids about a cousin shooting a coyote and how coyotes would eat our chickens and that's why we keep them safe, etc.  The next day, Kiddo1 and Kiddo2 were running through the house saying "Here comes the pink coyote!"  

(see below for pink coyote...)

And while she doesn't yet talk, she has a few motions that we know the meanings of and she can sing.  Which is the sweetest sound you'll ever hear.  And then she giggles, which is the second sweetest sound.

She's an almost independent eater, one of her favorite foods is eggs, over easy.  (This morning she ate three!)

Today we had a lot of work to do outside to get ready for the turkeys.  Kiddo3 was a trooper and came with us all over the place.  But when we came in, she was tired and went to her bed.  She pulled out her blanket enough to have it on her head (where it is when she sleeps, she has to have something on her head) and went to sleep on the floor beside her bed.

Kiddo3 has a lot of nicknames, but my favorite for her is Little One.  Her sense of wonder and awe is amazing and makes me stop, just watching her.  She is so attentive and learning so much each day.  For example, she's figured out that when I sit down at the table it's time to pray and she clasps her little hands and then reaches for my hand and Kiddo1's hand.  Even if I get up to get something and sit back down, she thinks we need to pray again!

Today she saw her first turkeys and the wonder was there again.  

See that sparkle in her eye, the smile on her face, the hand clasped in joy?  That's my Little One!

Easter skirts

I love to sew.  I love fabric.  I love shopping for fabric.  Ooohhhh, how I love shopping for fabric.  Especially when I have a super cute project like Easter skirts for my girls.

I chronicled the pattern saga HERE

The new JoAnn's store just opened in Bismarck and I happened to be in town for a meeting and thought I'll check it out and get the fabric and such there.  I hadn't shopped JoAnn's for a quite some time and I soon remembered why:  They don't stock their fabric by collection.  They stock it by color.  Which some people may prefer.  I do not.  I want all the coordinating fabrics together.

{In case you don't know how fabric production works:  A designer will produce a "line" of fabrics with a them of color, pattern, tone, etc.  The fabrics are designed to work together to achieve a look.}

Alas, time and again I would find two fabrics that were in a line, but could never find a third to go with them.  Now, had the fabrics been arranged by collection, there would be 6-12 fabrics that all coordinate.  Grrr....

I just about left when I decided to cruise the baby fabric aisle.  Where, for some rational reason, those fabrics were in collections.  {insert applause here}  And I just happened to find some super cute coordinating lady bugs, flowers and polka dots.  All things Kiddo1 had said she would want on her skirt!!

In an afternoon and with help from Kiddo1, I whipped up these super cute skirts for the girls.

 Kiddo1's on the left has a pre-pleated ruffle, but I didn't have enough to do Kiddo3's on the right.  Thankfully, at age 1 she doesn't notice those things yet!!

 Kiddo1 was just a little excited to have a new twirly skirt.

As life would have it, I didn't get a picture of the girls in their new skirts on Easter.  But I'm sure we'll be wearing them again soon!

Toddlers and Easter Eggs

In case you don't know, we raise chickens.  That lay eggs.  Lots of eggs.  We haven't bought eggs in almost two years and we sure aren't going to buy them at Easter when we're swimming in eggs around here.  

Some people believe that you can't dye brown eggs.  I set out to prove them wrong. 

(And managed to prove that I'm an idiot, always a plus to have a humbling moment!)

First, let's talk how to boil eggs.  Here's how I do it:

Most Important:  Use eggs that are at least a week old.  This is difficult in our house as our eggs are always fresh.  I literally have to hide a dozen so that I have week-old eggs to boil.

Why do they have to be a week old?  The shell of an egg is porous and some of the water in the egg will evaporate as it ages.  This leaves a slight separation between the shell and the white and makes them oh-so-much easier to peel.

Put eggs gently in pan.  Add water from the tap.  The temperature really doesn't matter.

Put them on the stove, turn the burner to high and wait for them to just start boiling.

Set your timer for nine minutes.

GO!

 After nine minutes, turn off the burner and immediately remove the pan from the burner.

Wait an additional 2 minutes and then drain the hot water from the eggs.  

And here's where I'm an idiot.  Normally, when I hard boil eggs I'm using them for deviled eggs, egg salad or kid-snacks.  I just toss them into the colander.  Who cares if they crack??  I'll just be peeling them in an hour anyway.

I was cooking eggs on autopilot and tossed the EGGS TO BE DYED into the colander and then yelled.  Because I had broken half of the dyeable eggs.  Good grief...

So I boiled up some more eggs.

 Then we got down to business.  We reached another milestone with Kiddo3 the day before the egg dyeing, she can climb up to the table now.  Which made this family-memory-making opportunity infinitely more difficult.

I set up nine different colors and we had fifteen eggs.  Before we started, I thought "Fifteen is definitely not enough."  Then we did it, and it was more than enough.

Kiddo1 is in charge of eight of the colors.  Kiddo2 only dyed one egg.  It was in the orange dye right in front of his cowboy hat.  It was the first egg in the dye and it was the last egg out.  He fussed over that egg.  He only did one egg, but he did it very well!

 Here are some of Kiddo1's eggs.  Notice the peeling on the yellow, red and light blue eggs?  We don't wash all of our eggs.  Only the ones that have ANY dust, dirt, hay, etc. on them.  When a hen lays an egg, she puts an anti-microbial coating on the shell.  We want to preserve that if we can.  Did you know you can't sell a washed egg in Europe for that very reason??

Anyway, those three eggs were not washed and the dye couldn't penetrate that natural coating.  Isn't that just the neatest thing??  This former science teacher and self-professed science nerd had an AH-HA moment right then...

We dyed 15 eggs, six of them ended up on the floor at various times, two were eaten right away.  Not too shabby for a three year old, a two year old and a mom with a one year old in a head lock under her arm to keep her from dumping nine cups of egg dye on her head.

I called my mom when we were done and said, "I think anyone who dyes eggs with three toddlers deserves some kind of an award."

She said, "Or a nap."  That's my mom.  Mother of three toddlers once herself.  Who also dyed eggs and has the pictures to prove it.  

Thanks Mom, for doing for us so that I could do for them!!