Chickens Won't Eat Their Food! Help!

[my7luus]

Hi

I used to keep my chicken feeders in the run. We recently had a racoon break into our run (who saw and wanted some of the chicken food) luckily all the chickens were fine and we have since trapped him and let him go into another woods away from the coop. Naturally, since we don't want any other predators around I have put the chicken feeders inside the chicken coop, but my chickens just won't eat anything from them. I know that lots of chicken owners keep their food inside the coop, but they also tend to have a shed or barn as a coop. We have an amish chicken coop which is still pretty big but the chickens don't like to hang out in there during the day. I am not sure what to do. Should I try to show them where the food is? and bait it with some mealworms? Should I just take the risk and put the feeder back in the open? Should I create one of those feeders that are trashcans and have little pvc pipes sticking out? (Keep in mind this would have to stay in the run) Do I need to make some sort of 'food house'? I can't really put out a scoop of food during the day because I am at work but would this work? Or spend $300 on a grandpa's feeder. Please help!

 

[redsoxs]

I don't think they will starve themselves to death if the choice was between that or eat the only available food which is in the coop. Here's an option - leave them locked in the coop for a day. They just need to get used to the new location of the kitchen!

 

[azygous]

Why not feed them where they hang out during the day, but bring the feeders in at night?

I was doing this as a matter of policy since I live in a wilderness setting surrounded by predators that would be attracted to the food if left in the run at night. Especially bears.

Now I feed fermented feed and it's consumed in a matter of a few hours. I feed twice a day, and it's all consumed by roosting time. The amount of time the food is present in the run is a mere fraction of the fourteen hours that dry feed was present.

When I used dry food feeders, I fashioned some carriers that allowed me to carry four feeders at once into the garage. It was worth the little extra effort to have peace of mind I wasn't leaving a bear attraction in the run overnight.