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It Aint Pretty, But It Was Free

It aint pretty, But it was FREE

So I had my feed split between a 1 qt chick feeder & 24" tray type chick feeder for my 5 Red sex link hens. This was working well except that all the food usage was I think jsut waste as they were knocking the feeders over in the coop. So I went looking for a new feeder & found the regular store bought ones for 30 bucks.. OUCH!! My hens only cost me 25 bucks between the 5 of em so I diddnt want to spend that much on a feeder. well on a recent trip to my dads house I noticed he had what appread to be the same store type feeder in one of his coops except a little mroe beat up & then I realised it was a coffee can, pie tin & a couple wire coat hangers. So I decided to make my own..

Well what you see here is the bottom of a square cat litter container (used this instead of a 5 gallon bucket since it is a little smaller), 2 plastic Folgers coffee cans (are they still called coffee cans when there plastic), some insulated copper wire & some scrap wood I had sitting around.

 

My chickens dont eat much so I couldnt tell you how much this holds. But it goes down about 1/2" a day & has a total of about 18" of food.

Here is the 2 gallon watterer that I wanted to get off the shelf that was in here. I havent though of anything creative & free to make this any bigger so it was just some of the same copper wire twisted around the indent near the top. Should be mentioned though that this waterer was actually free because my grandparents had it & diddnt know why (they had ferrets about 15 or so years ago & our best guess is that this has been sitting around since then).

Here are a couple pics of the feeder & waterer in the coop.

 

 

Comments (8)

what a good idea i think that kind of thing will work for me to im gonna try to think of a bigger version thank for sharing
I'm just getting my coop & yard ready for Urban chickens and the coffee "can" idea will be perfect! Thanks
Great, I've got to try this design!!!
Love this idea. No shortage of coffee cans here. Now the empty cans can be put to good use.
Thanks for sharing. I made a similar version based on yours and am thinking about adding more cans to make it even taller (to hold more) http://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/image/view/album/6197463/id/5162841/sort/display_order
Question (true of all hanging waterers and feeders):
If the birds go nuts for some reason, do they knock the hangers around and spill/slosh the food and water? I'm just getting started so I want to learn all I can so I can make my first ones be my LAST ones (unless I get more birds and need more capacity).
Your "Folgers Feeder" was inspiration for the feeder I just made. Used a Folgers can and got a square hard plastic tupperware-type container from the Dollar Store. Cut four holes in the bottom of the can for the food to come out of. DH screwed the can to the base so it wouldn't slip around and then drilled four holes -one each side - on the base container. Strung it up via wire through those four holes. It won't win any beauty contest but the girl's sure love it! Thanks for the great idea!
COOL>Love your coop
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