Feed available at night?

[Merryment]

Only if you leave the light on, otherwise you'll probably just be feeding mice and rats. Poor dears are blind as bats in the dark. Blinder, really. But they sure don't have any problem pooping in the dark (as she goes outside for the weekly roost cleaning).

 

[lburress]

This was a great question. Thanks for asking.

 

[mimischickies]

This was a great question! I am new to the chicken thing too. I built a chicken ark (the Catabaw Coop), so there is really no room up in the roost area for food and water. Mine only have acces to food and water during the day. Has worked well so far, I have 5 7-9 wk olds. They do head straight for the food when I let them out each morning.

 

[lcbova85]

I had a homemade feeder and I cut the holes to big and a lot of their food spills over and onto the ground of their coop. I took the feeder out so they would eat all the food off the floor. I have been noticing that they will only eat in the day time even though their is food available to them at all times, even at night. They choose to eat only in day time I think as there is no food missing at night time. If that makes sense

 

[Tenmore]

Mine is in side the coop so they have access 24 7(they dont use it at night near as I can tell)....But mostly to keep it out of the rain and snow as my run is not covered but now that summer is finally here in UTAH I will be adding water outside aswell as inside good luck

 

[briteday]

My waterer bucket (5 gallon bucket with nipples in the bottom) is outside during the summer (add frozen blue ice containers to keep it cool during hottest days) and inside the coop during the freezing months warmed with an aquarium heater to keep it from freezing. I plug the heater into a Thermo cube so it only heats the water when the air temp is below freezing to save energy.

I feed kitchen and garden scraps in the run in the morning when I go out to open the coop door. And they get layer pellets at dinner time, outside, so that it is always cleaned up by dark. I found that keeping food in the coop increased our mouse problem exponentially. This year has been by far the worst and I don't even have food out except at their dinner time. When I go out at dusk to close up the coop there have been oodles of little beady eyes of mice staring back at me lately. So if I kept food in the coop at night I'd be going broke from my feed bill.

My climate is generally very dry with some snow in the winter. But even then we have a tarp that covers part of the run and my food and water containers are in that area.

 

[Rainbow Dash]

It's always out, 24/7/365. Never know when they'll get hungry or thirsty, ya know.