Do you love the benefits of feeding fermented food to your chicks and chickens? Are you tired of poop in the fermented feed? Is seeing your chicks' feet covered in hard, dried clumps of Fermented Food driving you crazy? Don't give up on the food your critters love! Get the handy dandy Fuss Free Fermented Feed Feeder - or better yet, build it yourself!
All of this can be yours, for less than one hour of your time and the cost of these simple parts!
Vinyl rain gutter - $8.99
End caps for said gutter - 2 @ 3.49 each
Tube gutter sealant - 4.00
Length of small chain - 5.00
Pack small "S" hooks - 2.00
Pack large "S" hooks - 2.50
Rubber grommets - 4@ .33 each
Total: $30.79
(prices may vary, depending on zip code -
Here's how to order - er - build.
STEP ONE: Cut the rain gutter in half. You now have almost the entire feeder done, top and bottom. Wasn't that easy? Fit an end cap to each open end of the feeder part and secure it with some of that gutter sealant stuff. Let it dry overnight. (I forgot that part in my one hour estimate, but you can use that time wisely - give your FF a stir or watch a little chicken TV or something.)
STEP TWO: The two halves of the gutter. See what the plan is? Okay, the end caps are dry and the chickens are put away. Now drill 2 holes in each end of the bottom part of the feeder, one on each side. The size of the holes will depend on the size of the grommets used. We used a 3/8 inch hole and pushed the grommets through. Notice that they are about 2" from the very end of the feeder. The grommets are important - otherwise the chain would end up splitting the vinyl.
Insert small "S" hooks into each grommet. Use a small piece cut off your chain to make the inverted "Y", looping it from one side of the feeder to the other. Your hanging chain will be suspended from that via another small "S" hook.
STEP THREE: It might be a little hard to see clearly here, but Ken is running the end of the chain down through a hole that he drilled in the half of the gutter that will become the "shield". The small "S" hooks from STEP TWO will hold the hanging chain to the inverted "Y" snug up against the underside of the cover. (Ignore that annoying chain that's hanging down in front of the feeder bottom - it's just waiting to be threaded down through the other side.)
STEP FOUR: The free end of the chain is inserted into the hole on the other side, caught by the corresponding "S" hook, and PRESTO - we have a covered Fermented Food Feeder!
All finished and ready to hang in the run! The chain used for hanging is just one piece, running from "S" hook to "S" hook on the underside of the cover. When we hung it, we used 2 large "S" hooks and secured it to the cattle panel framework in our run.
Filling it was easy - the cover slides up and out of the way, then we just slide it back down when we're finished.
And the family approves! We put a brick and the chicks' old roost on one side so the LIttles and the Tinys can reach. Notice that the cover is low enough that they can't get in and stomp around in the FF, but the gap between bottom and cover is enough to prevent their heads from getting stuck or having them scrape up their combs.
Oh, and there's a bonus! Some of our more adventurous little trouble-makers thought that looked like a great place to roost! Um, not so much. They flew up and when they landed on it the exposed underside of that gutter is so slick they shot right off the other side. A couple of times of getting dumped on their hineys put an end to that great adventure!
That's it. So put an end to the frustration of messy feet and feed! Get yours today! But wait! If you build now, we'll double your order! Just pay shipping and handling! Oh, wait, wrong commercial.
