Last year when we got our first batch of chicks (before we got our own little chick, Charlotte), we put them in the then-vacant baby nursery upstairs. This year, Charlotte has taken up occupancy in her room, and it seemed like it might get a little crowded with an additional eight Plymouth Barred Rock chicks and twelve broilers (meat birds). So we built a brooding box and set up the chick nursery in the back house. (The architecture of the house is that of the traditional New England connected farmhouse, which follows the buidling structure of "big house, little house, back house, barn." And so we decided to call our family room/den the "back house" because we just didn't like calling it either a "family room" or "den.") The brooder, it turns out, doubles as a very entertaining, if just a little bit smelly, coffe table.