I just have to post a pic of my feeder, I can't help it, I'm so proud!
My husband's deer feeder's motor burned out and the rest went onto the scrap pile. I noticed it there and checked to make sure he didn't have plans to fix it and I went to work.
I used the bracket that the motor attached to and cut a piece of 4" PVC pipe to the length I wanted. I attached it with two pipe clamps from Lowes. Then I used an "S" hook to hang the plastic feeder (I had laying around) so that the pipe went down inside the top of the feeder when the wire handle was hooked to the clamp by the "S" hook. I only used one section of pipe (the original feeder stood on two lenghts of pipe for legs) for each leg.
Voila! Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! Now I have a feeder that holds at least 200lbs of layer pellets. I keep it under a lean-to on the back of our shop where DH parks his tractor, so it won't get wet when it rains.
The only potential problem I can see is if I need to take the plastic feeder part off for some reason, there is no valve to shut off the flow of feed. The other issue would be if the birds knocked it off the "S" hook and all the feed dispensed onto the ground. It is surprisingly secure, though, because the weight of the feed keeps it pressed hard against the pipe because the handle is secured off-center.
Neither of these have happened, but I still won't put more than one 50Lb bag (plus what's left from the last bag) in at a time until I am confident that it is reliable. The only problem I have had is once it stopped up and wouldn't feed down the pipe. The chickens ate all the feed out of the base of the feeder and I had to poke a stick in from the top to get it moving. It wasn't hard to do, but it made me more careful to check it dailey. If it happens again, I will take off the hard plastic funnel shaped piece that bolts to the bottom and cut it off some to make the hole bigger. The hole there is only about an inch and a quarter across and can easily be enlarged to two, three or three and a half inches across.
All in all, I love it and wanted to share... what do ya'll think!
My husband's deer feeder's motor burned out and the rest went onto the scrap pile. I noticed it there and checked to make sure he didn't have plans to fix it and I went to work.
I used the bracket that the motor attached to and cut a piece of 4" PVC pipe to the length I wanted. I attached it with two pipe clamps from Lowes. Then I used an "S" hook to hang the plastic feeder (I had laying around) so that the pipe went down inside the top of the feeder when the wire handle was hooked to the clamp by the "S" hook. I only used one section of pipe (the original feeder stood on two lenghts of pipe for legs) for each leg.
Voila! Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! Now I have a feeder that holds at least 200lbs of layer pellets. I keep it under a lean-to on the back of our shop where DH parks his tractor, so it won't get wet when it rains.
The only potential problem I can see is if I need to take the plastic feeder part off for some reason, there is no valve to shut off the flow of feed. The other issue would be if the birds knocked it off the "S" hook and all the feed dispensed onto the ground. It is surprisingly secure, though, because the weight of the feed keeps it pressed hard against the pipe because the handle is secured off-center.
Neither of these have happened, but I still won't put more than one 50Lb bag (plus what's left from the last bag) in at a time until I am confident that it is reliable. The only problem I have had is once it stopped up and wouldn't feed down the pipe. The chickens ate all the feed out of the base of the feeder and I had to poke a stick in from the top to get it moving. It wasn't hard to do, but it made me more careful to check it dailey. If it happens again, I will take off the hard plastic funnel shaped piece that bolts to the bottom and cut it off some to make the hole bigger. The hole there is only about an inch and a quarter across and can easily be enlarged to two, three or three and a half inches across.
All in all, I love it and wanted to share... what do ya'll think!
