Bear resistant feeder design

[Cbartul]

Hello all, first post. Forgive me if this should be in the feeding and watering section. I need to come up with a solution to moving my feed outside the coop in bear country. I live in North East Pennsylvania, I have a pretty strong coop, but I have an open run. Probably 30x30 welded wire.

I'm trying to come up with a bear resistant solution to a feeder. Has anyone executed this successfully?

 

[Lazy Farmer]

good luck..

 

[Egghead_Jr]

If you bring your feed into a shed or your house at night it's not likely you'll attract bear.

 

[Peppercorngal]

We never feed our chickens inside the coop, never had. The coop is their safe place and we don't want to attract mice, fox or any predator to their safe place. We only feed in the run. I had a bear break into our plastic shed and take a bag of chicken feed so we had to start storing it in our wooden shed. Late last year the bears decided they wanted to eat the chickens, not the feed. They broke into our coop and got almost all our chickens, leaving only two out of 18. We had a resin shed all tricked out for them but the doors were not bear proof. We not have a new wooden shed with a man door with a dead bolt. We are praying they can't get in it this year. I hope you have better luck with your flock. And welcome here!

 

[Peppercorngal]

I meant NOW not NOT! Now we have a new wooden shed for a coop!

 

[Cbartul]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice! I've had their feed in the coop for about a year, and haven't had any pest issues. Though, that's probably more attributable to my awesome cats.

I don't mind the idea of putting the food in nightly, but the coop is a nice walk from any storage structure and I don't think my wife would really appreciate carrying 40lb feeders to the garage!

I was toying with the idea of using steel piping to replicate the pvc feeders I'm currently using, then bolting them to the fence posts, or the coop's structural 4x4s.

 

[Howard E]

Your bear resistant solution is to install an electric fence designed for bears around the area you want to protect. Do it right and you won't have any problems, and won't have to move anything.

Electric fences have become the "universal" solution to dealing with bears.

Go to youtube and search "electric fence bears".

 

[aart]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice! I've had their feed in the coop for about a year, and haven't had any pest issues. Though, that's probably more attributable to my awesome cats.

I don't mind the idea of putting the food in nightly, but the coop is a nice walk from any storage structure and I don't think my wife would really appreciate carrying 40lb feeders to the garage!

I was toying with the idea of using steel piping to replicate the pvc feeders I'm currently using, then bolting them to the fence posts, or the coop's structural 4x4s.

Your cats can fight off bears?!?! JK

Would the steel pipe feeders be in a run or out in the open?
If in a run, the bears my still tear run apart getting to pipes.

Howard's got this right...hot wire for bears.

Surprised you haven't had trouble with them already after a whole year....
....why the concern now?

 

[Cbartul]

No kidding, I've witnessed my larger cat chase a black bear up a tree!

Electric is probably the way I'll end up going.

My concern comes now because I need to move the feed out of the coop, to give the birds a bit more room. They'll be getting some new additions to the flock soon!

 

[aart]

No kidding, I've witnessed my larger cat chase a black bear up a tree!

Oh, wish you had video!!

Oh, and BTW, Welcome to BYC!
Might want to add your location to your profile.