Help - Chickens wasting feed!

[Abriana]

One thing I’ve thought of trying but have not is a wooden frame over a tray with hardware cloth stretched over it/smaller wire (which would probably be better). That way the feed goes through but the poop can’t, and at the end of the day you refill the feeder with what’s caught in the tray.

 

[farmgirl7]

I'm up to 11 hens and have added another set of these. We add feed and water about once a
week. Zero waste!

 

[Liz Birdlover]

The feed I use now is pellet layer. I only used crumble for chicks. When they get older they tend to make a mess with the crumble, at least mine did.

The feeders I use are the metal ones that hang, and the only times my chickens made a mess were when the feeder was too low, or if I added some scratch grain in with pellets so the chickens were then shoveling the pellets out of the way to grab the grains.

When I raised the feeder only about an inch, (1 or 2 links of the chain hanging) and when I stopped mixing anything else in that feeder with pellets feed, all of that wasteful activity stopped.

A few of my chickens also made a mess playing with the waterer, so I raised that by setting the waterer on landscape blocks. Each block is 2" & I had to use 3 blocks to keep wood chips being flung into water & stop the playful water mess.

So far so good

 

[vantain]

We were having this issue as well. I got a cheap little grill that is bigger in diameter than my feeder, took the legs off and she it on top. This way I'm catching the wasted feed and can reuse it in the feeder!

I may have to try this. I have the same feeder, and the same problem. Question though, was this picture taken after you had this system in place for awhile? I only ask, because I still see a lot of feed on the ground all around the feeder in the photo.

 

[TOPChickens14]

So yeah, maybe if it wasn't so fine they'd wastes less. Alson try different feeding vessel. I use a rain gutter that i screwed to the wall and then you don't have to buy a feeder because the gutter has the same purpose.

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