Hens making mess with feeder

[Alaskan]

Good action plan...and nice clean coop!

 

[Al Gerhart]

Just about any feeder including a hanging feeder or one of the homemade PVC elbow feeders will work till the rats and mice find your coop. You won't notice it at first but your feed consumption will rise as the rat colony grows. And with the rats and mice come snakes and other rodent predators like owls and hawks.

Eventually you are going to buy a treadle feeder and solve the problem, which by that time you will have wasted enough feed to have paid for the feeder. Find one with a spring loaded door and a counterweight. It should have a feed lip that projects back into the feeder a half inch and for a small number of birds that won't do to stop them from raking feed so be sure they have a feeder lip extender available.

Do a forum search on BYC.com for rat proof chicken feeder. You will either buy a good feeder or pay for it another way. Plus the rodents bring in so much disease and pests like lice.

 

[jthornton]

Eventually you are going to buy a treadle feeder and solve the problem, which by that time you will have wasted enough feed to have paid for the feeder.

It's much more fun to use high voltage electric shock therapy on the mice and well anything that thinks it wants to be inside the chicken yard. I've never had any animal in my feeder since installing hot wires on my fence.

JT

 

[archeryrob]

Just about any feeder including a hanging feeder or one of the homemade PVC elbow feeders will work till the rats and mice find your coop. You won't notice it at first but your feed consumption will rise as the rat colony grows. And with the rats and mice come snakes and other rodent predators like owls and hawks.

Two words "Female cat" let her inside and outside and I promise you you will not have a mouse or rat problem. Just get her fixed so you don't have a cat problem.

Tom cats are lazy and useless except for petting and making baby cats.

 

[nick98370]

Well, it's been a few weeks so I thought I would post my progress.

After several variations of raising/lowering feeder and changing gap between feed bucket and tray, the girls kept making a mess of the coop so I decided to take the design of a feeder from @jthornton and modify it a bit like @archeryrob also did. Thank you to both of you for the ideas!

Here's the cleaned up coop and the finished feeder...

 

[Folly's place]

Nice!
Mary

 

[archeryrob]

How wide is that? Plexiglass over a long distance may need a board down the center like a divider to keep it from bowing.

The biggest thing I notices if JT's gap for the feed at 1" seemed to be about right. I tried it at 1 3/4" and it seemed good, for a couple days and they were knocking feed all over the floor. Fixed the gap to 1" and that problem stopped.

Looks good, you won't have to fill that one very often.

 

[nick98370]

How wide is that? Plexiglass over a long distance may need a board down the center like a divider to keep it from bowing.

The biggest thing I notices if JT's gap for the feed at 1" seemed to be about right. I tried it at 1 3/4" and it seemed good, for a couple days and they were knocking feed all over the floor. Fixed the gap to 1" and that problem stopped.

Looks good, you won't have to fill that one very often.

It’s 32” wide. The plexiglas I used is fairly thick, so shouldn’t bow much. I put in dividers in the feeder tray that will assist with eliminating any bow if there is any. I’ll keep an eye on it and make changes as needed.