DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[mlowen]

MumsyII on the Natural Chicken Keeping thread lives in an area with lots of eagles & other birds of prey. She has tall flags and streamers around her property & it has worked well. Leah's Mom, also on the NCK thread, and her husband put up flags using pvc pipe...really tall. Also seems to be working. You can search for their posts to see pictures of their places.

 

[Bens-Hens]

Another Aussie shared this info earlier today, three video's on a DIY feeder and nipple waterer.

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I found all three video's very good, and showcases our accent lol #notacrikeywasgiven

 

[perchie.girl]

Ok here is something I have been using since I started chicken keeping. Since I use either Aviary panels Or dog kennel panels I had to come up with a perch system that would work for both even for one on one side and the other on the other side.

Simply two by fours cut to span the width of the coop with Two eye bolts fastened in the end set at the spacing for the aviary wire which is about two and a half inches.




I use these for the guineas but I hang them from the ceiling on bailing twine so the move and jiggle when they take off or run about up there. They seem to thrive on that motion..... I wanted to simulate roosting in tree branches. I do set the twine as a V so it keeps the roosts level and reduces the amount of jiggle.

deb

 

[aart]

Good Idea....NICE sketch!

 

[perchie.girl]

Good Idea....NICE sketch!

Thanks it gives me the flexibiltiy to set em low for tweenagers or silkys or set em higher for the big birds. My sketching days are wayy behind me doing a hand sketch now needs alot of touch up. Doesnt help that I choose to draw with pen. LOL.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

OK here is the next project I want to tackle..... A roll out tunnel nest.

The deal with me is during the summer it gets over a hundred sometimes a hundred and five degrees at my house. I dont live there at this time. I live sixty miles away with my very elderly grandmother. I go up and feed and count beaks about twice per week. All moot now because I lost all my poultry to coyotes last week. Long sad story ..... all my fault. I am not replenishing my flock till I have my coop rebuilt better. I have a link to my coop page at the bottom of my signature.

So.... next spring I hope to start over. Guineas and Sumatras only to begin with.

Here is my sketch for the Roll out nest. My coop partitions are six feet wide The box is two feet by three feet. The floor of the nest slopes to the back where a bar blocks being able to see eggs after they roll into the drawer. There should be room enough for three or four hens to comfortably get in there at the same time for egg laying. When I was doing research on this These kinds of nest boxes were used for pastured poultry The whole underside of the drawer pocket is sealed. There are no runners or drawer glides only smooth edges. If I had my druthers Id make the whole drawer out of either delrin or polycarbonate about half inch thick. It can be worked just like wood. But the nice part about the plastic is its natural gliding qualities.



The other reason for doing something like this is I want to devise a chilling area for underneath the egg drawer. If I can keep the temps lower than ambient the eggs will keep for three days. I am thinking of some sort of heat exchanging deal. Still havent worked that out yet.

deb

 

[aart]

I still do most my designing on cad.....if sketching by hand I always use a pencil with a silicone eraser, I am NOT good at hand sketching...must have eraser.

That would be a dear, dear hunk o' delrin.....you could use adhesive backed Teflon strips for glides on the bottom of drawer...think you can get it thru McMaster Carr.

 

[perchie.girl]

I still do most my designing on cad.....if sketching by hand I always use a pencil with a silicone eraser, I am NOT good at hand sketching...must have eraser.

That would be a dear, dear hunk o' delrin.....you could use adhesive backed Teflon strips for glides on the bottom of drawer...think you can get it thru McMaster Carr.

Yep I do my serious stuff on Cad as well. Unfortunately I had to uninstall Solid Designer because my computer is close to end of life.... LOL. I used to have AutoCad Lite. But that too is overwhelming for this PC. But before Cad I sketched to get my ideas down either with grid paper or with a straight edge. This last one was with a straight edge kind of a mock perspective.

Yep Delrin is expensive. I do know an electronics salvage place where I can get experimental pieces though. ABS would work as well and I can get flat sheets too. ABS might be a better choice because you can thermal-form it if you can make a mold. But that requires a good heat gun the industrial kind for removing paint. With some careful tooling and I could make the whole tray out of it.

What I want is a solid bottom to the drawer so that if any bits of dirt of any kind will be swept out through holes designed for that. I dont want to have to be cleaning the pocket out because the drawer jams. My first thought was either delrin or polycarb. I need to do a little more research. The solution may be as simple as using poly carb film..... The stuff is pretty tough.

McMaster Carr is a great resource isnt it? I have a local plastics supplier that I can bounce questions off as well. They also have a recycle bin that you can simply go down and dig for Bits and pieces and pay much much less for it.

deb

 

[mlowen]

I don't know if I can call this an actual "invention...." But for those of us whose chickens cannot forage nearly as much as we'd like and who have an abundance of grasshoppers, I created a jar top that allows for "stuffing" the critters in, but they cannot jump out. I cut a circle out of an old plastic file folder to fit the top of a canning jar and cut a cross-wise slit in it and screwed on the ring. It works really well. You can even put it down long enough to make a two-handed catch.

 

[LisaYolkUm]

I don't know if I can call this an actual "invention...." But for those of us whose chickens cannot forage nearly as much as we'd like and who have an abundance of grasshoppers, I created a jar top that allows for "stuffing" the critters in, but they cannot jump out. I cut a circle out of an old plastic file folder to fit the top of a canning jar and cut a cross-wise slit in it and screwed on the ring. It works really well. You can even put it down long enough to make a two-handed catch.
I like it and I think it is an invention! nice share!