Homemade Rat Proof Feeder

[9d84runner]

My son and husband built this feeder for me. Our hoarder neighbor finally moved out (yay!), and in the aftermath of the big clean-up, surprise... rats! I've had chickens at this house for 4 years now without a single rodent issue.I splurged on a fancy treadle feeder thinking it would solve everything. It did keep the rats out but my chickens acted like it was a trap from a horror movie. I followed the instructions and ever got hints a tips from there but after 4 months I threw in the rag.

We had an automatic coop door we ended up not using so my son came up with the idea of an automatic chicken feeder. It's solar powered and has 3 or 4 different opening and closing schedules you can pick from. Not sure how well the door will hold up with the sand and we may need to lift it up a bit buuuut I was so proud of his idea I had to show it off. We added hardware cloth to the bottom so no sneaky digging underneath.

If this doesn't work I think we will use a deer game feeder and just have it go off 2 or 3 times a day. I am hoping this is our answer along with getting rid of the rats as well.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Thinking out side the box for sure!

But first, let's talk about your treadle feeder and what can be done to get the hens to use it. It is very, very rare that hens will not use a treadle feeder. In my experience after selling around 20,000 feeders it is 99.9999% human error. People not reading the instructions, not comprehending them, or just being too stubborn to follow the instructions.

Do you have any pictures of the feeder after it was installed? And can you describe how you went about the initial training?

 

[Altairsky]

That's a great idea, lol!
Don't give up on the treadle feeder, I also was afraid my chickens would never eat from that but I was just overthinking and they learned to use it with no issue.

 

[Al Gerhart]

That is exactly what happens with the two to three percent that have trouble with a good treadle feeder. They overthink.

BTW, this feeder is clever but it isn't even close to being ratproof. They can come and go anytime it is open and eat their fill. But it does stop the need to open and close the feeder every night and limits the time available to chew through the plastic pipe.

 

[BDutch]

It's solar powered and has 3 or 4 different opening and closing schedules you can pick from.

How exactly does this work?
The chickens can access the food only during certain time/times? And the rats won’t come to diner at that time?

I have been reading more people having trouble to make the chickens eat from the treadle feeder. The tip I read was to lay a heavy stone on the footplate at feeding times.
Often this is all you need to do, bc the chickens know now where the food is.

If the chickens still don’t get it (after they get used to stepping up on the feeder foot plate) change the heavy stone for a lighter one. The 1-2 pound stone makes the treadle feeder to open up very easily. Sit next to it when its feeding time and open the lid when they come to the feeder.

They will grasp that the mechanism starts to work if they step up on the footplate. And they get used to the noise and movement of the lid opening up.

After a few days you can take away the lighter stone. And the rats can’t even access the feed during daytime.

More tips and explanations in the video:

 

[Al Gerhart]

I know you mean well but this is the worst advice you could give someone with a treadle feeder. Yes, the manufactures of the guillotine style feeders tell you to do this but they tell you to do this for another reason.

The standard training recommended is three weeks, lock the feeder open using their "training bolts" for a week, move it to another set of holes so the treadle moves a bit when the hens use the feeder for another week, then remove the bolts and go to full operation for the third week. Most people are honest and thoughtful, they hate to return a product knowing the cost to the seller so they will try a bit longer.

Now they are past the 30 day return period......this probably makes it possible to sell on Amazon if you have a well made, fairly expensive to produce, low profit margin product. This is not the standard though, the majority of Amazon sales, over half, are Chinese produce products with fantastic markups, five, ten times the cost of producing. With that margin you can stand one in ten items being returned.

This would not be the case with an item like the Grandpa feeder which while being a very old, very unsafe, very outdated design, it is well made with heavy steel and is costly to produce. They started off selling north of $250, absorbing around 35% loss from Amazon fees and positioning freight for the product, leaving them with maybe $160 to manufacture the feeders in China and ship them to the U.S. That cost would be maybe $9 per feeder, leaving them with $151.00. Now they were paying maybe $30.00 for the Chinese furniture company to produce the feeder, a five times markup, sustainable even with a good number of returns.

The Grandpa knock offs, also Chinese made, are going as low as $60.00 retail before the tariffs, meaning they were likely going wholesale for less than $30.00. And the market rarely gets pricing wrong, this is all they are worth, and for some folks the feeders work especially if they are not overrun with rodents before the feeders are put in use.

In most first world countries, 5% profit at year end is a good year. Not so in China, some of the suppliers I used years ago told me they sold at cost, the CCP subsidized (paid for) the internal shipping to port and the port fees and sometimes they pay the entire shipping cost to the first world port. The profit for the producer is a 10% rebate the CCP gives out to exporters. Or this is how it worked prior to 2016, might have changed, I am not sure.

So, the knock offs can flood in and stand 25% returns which destroy the profit on 75% of the sales, and still move their product. Chinese sellers on Amazon are NOT trying to make a retail profit; they are moving goods trying to survive in China and breaking even while getting their 10% rebate from the CCP is a good year.

I've done the math, our feeder would have to go from $85 to double that in order to sell on Amazon and not lose money. Grandpa NEEDS the majority of the sales to miss the 30 day return policy. So they recommend a training period that takes up the majority of the 30 days.

Now, with the explanation of their training recommendation out of the way, what does work?

You train the way the feeder is used. With the lid or door moving so that the chicken understands IT IS SUPPOSED TO MOVE! So they are not freaked out when the lid does start going over their head. Even with the proper inward swinging door you MUST allow the door to move and allow the chickens to get hungry enough to make them bold enough to try the newfangled contraption.

IF the feeder is solid as a rock, no wiggle, no wobble, totally still as far as the box is concerned, IF the treadle bottoms out so the hen can pin down the treadle with one leg while standing on the other leg, 95% of all chickens will take to the feeder in a few days. One gets it, then two, then they all figure it out while eating with the smarter or bolder hens.

Chickens are smarter than most of us realize. They see the feed, they know where the feed is. At most, toss some treats into the hopper while they watch then let them learn.

You do NOT sit there with them opening the feeder. That is teaching the hens that YOU need to open the feeder for them.

What you do is use your toe to depress the treadle. One will step up and try to eat. Let her eat for three to four seconds then gently push her away a few inches so she comes back.

If a hen doesn't step up, they are not hungry enough. Go do something else for two hours and come back and try again.


If your feeder door has an adjustable spring tension and it should, set the tension low enough that your lightest bird, say three pounds, can use the feeder. Have the feeder rock solid on a platform of three patio blocks so there is plenty of room in front to step up, don't think they can step up 10" onto a treadle. Later you can increase the spring tension to keep out mobs of rats or multiple squirrels. Block off the side access with milk jugs of sand or dirt. The silly metal side guards kill more birds than they save with the guillotine style feeders. The fewer pinch points the safer the feeder.

Rarely does a flock need to go to bed without learning to use the feeder or enough of them learning so the others can eat. But if they do, you have done something wrong! Now the hens go hungry for overnight. They won't die, they will be like little T rexs in the morning. They will eat.

But the flock owner HAS to follow the instructions to the very letter. Nothing left out. Nothing added. After selling tens of thousands of feeders we know what works best, not a first time user.

If after the second day and none of the hens are using the feeder you have NOT followed the instructions. It is hard to explain things briefly so people will read yet completely so it works. At that point, remove the feeder. WAIT three hours and put their old feeder back in. DO NOT give in and hand feed, do not reward them for being stubborn and refusing to use the feeder without that three hour wait.

Before you do that though take pictures from all three sides and send those pictures to the manufacturer who should have given you an email address. Do NOT call, pictures are needed to diagnose. Give a detailed description of how you trained and what happened or what didn't happen. While waiting for the response hit the reviews for the feeder on the website and learn from others.

What you will find is maybe 3% that admit they had trouble and most of them will admit they didn't follow the instructions at first and they will warn you to follow the instructions. One customer, I bet I spent three hours on the phone with him over the course of a week after his emailed pictures arrived. On the last day he reported success and I asked what he did different. He said he finally followed the directions......

Now by this time, this was a challenge to me, and this dude was easily one of the smartest men I had ever met. A doctor, a researcher, and a law degree. When he finally fessed up and admitted to not following the directions I had to ask why. His reply, the training process was not logical.....

Logic doesn't work on chickens. Instinct does, grabbing a perch with one claw, being hungry so they are motivated, not trusting something that wobbles around in use.


So thanks for the attempt to help but pinning down a treadle is the absolutely worst thing to do for a properly designed treadle feeder, even the Chinese made feeders like the Grandpa and the many knock offs. Train like the feeder is used. Solid base, attached solidly to a wall or post, treadle bottoming out with enough room to pin the treadle down with one foot while standing on the other, there is no need to do anything else but follow the years old instructions that have been finely tuned over years of manufacturing

 

[9d84runner]

So far the rats haven't been able to get into the new feeder. I have a camera setup in the coop and behind the feeders in the box I put a small sticky pad just in case because I'm pretty skeptical but so far so good. The rats also have attempted to try and get to the feeder while it's open in the day time.

The treadle feeder I purchased was the Grandpa feeder. I followed the instructions to a T. Even added an extra week to each step because I noticed once the feeder was at the halfway point, they were not attempting to eat from it at all. I added a longer piece to the foot step so it was longer and little cushion pieces to the lid so it wouldn't slam when they stepped off the step. At one point I emptied all their food out and put scrambled eggs and their favorite treat food because I thought for sure they would wouldn't be so afraid of the final step. I repeated the instructions and even came on here to get ideas. At one point I was like they will eat or they won't. For whatever reason the opening of the lid during the final setp is extremely scary to them and nothing I did for months worked. They understand they need to step on the plate to eat because step 1 and 2 they were eating from it but once the bolt was completely removed they said forget it.

When I had over 20 chickens it seemed they caught on easily because so many would do it and they would follow suit. We had an old deer feeder back then and it worked amazing. When we moved from CA to AZ, I sold most my flock and a friend took all my favorites. After 4 years of being chicken less I got chickens again but I only have 3 now and I noticed with 3, it's difficult to show them new things.

I still have the treadle feeder and if you have any suggestions I am open to trying and I may have done something incorrect but I did follow the instructions and watched so many videos before I even bought it. It was not cheap

 

[Al Gerhart]

Well, with the door open, there is nothing stopping the rats from getting to the feed. Eventually it will happen. The sticky pad was a great idea. And that is a metal door, correct? So at least at night the feed will be safe.

Grandpa feeder... read what I wrote above on why they use the instructions they do for training and how normal decent people blame themselves for the failure at first until the return period is gone.

They do promote a two year guarantee though so....... do it.

You made a great observation, with hens some would learn and teach the others while 4 hens made it far more difficult. It is an old, outdated, and frankly stupid design but it worked for them for a decade as the only competition was a wooden version with the same faults and worse. Then I came along, cut the price by two thirds and made a better feeder. But they still have a following, they still put New Zealand on their feeder despite it being made in China from the very beginning. The fine from the CPS and Customs would be in the millions of dollars if someone pushed the matter.

But plenty of people have had success with the Grandpa feeder and as you already have a lot of money invested you might be able to get it to work. It would be more rat proof than the pvc pipe feeders.

So, you cannot fix the biggest flaw, the overhead guillotine style lid. But you can slow it down. Head over to our website and look at the soft close kits we sell or the soft close feeders. Basically a quality soft close door damper held in a steel bracket made from a strip of galvanized steel. You can find both at Home Depot or Lowes, Simpsons makes all sorts of galvanized straps. Now, figuring out where to mount the cylinder, or cylinders, one on each side. The Grandpa feeder has a side bolt that the treadle rotates on. You want to mark the travel of the metal tube that rotates on the side bolt, find a spot where it is just right. Not too much travel, not too little. You want to use self tapping sheet metal screws to fasten the bracket that holds the soft close cylinder to the side of the feeder with maybe 1/8" of travel on the soft close left, so you have to compress the soft close cylinder. Place one screw in the very end, rotate the bracket down with the cylinder compressed with that 1/8" of travel left unused.

The soft close cylinders will have some adjustment, they will need to be set very light or you will need to balance out the lid with some extra weight fastened on top or up under the lid so there is enough downward pressure to close those two soft close cylinders. You might be able to retrofit a small extension spring on either side too to pull the lid closed instead of using the extra weight.

At least you will slow the lid down so it is less of a threat, give the hens another second to pull their head out, and quieten the action.

Next, tough love. Make sure the feeder is solidly set on three or four patio blocks, screwed to the wall so it is rock solid with zero wiggle or rocking. Fill the feeder and start training.

Cold turkey, full movement from day one. Install the feeder the night before, fill it with feed. Next morning, wait at least two hours so the hens are hungry. Open it with your toe, toss in some treats, let the lid close, and see if one of the hens steps up. If not, open the treadle again and see if one steps up to eat. If so, gently brush her off after three seconds of eating and see if she comes back. Repeat, with the hen opening the feeder. Wait a few minutes to see if she has the hang of it then leave. Even if she doesn't get it, leave after three minutes max.

Come back in two hours and repeat.

At the end of the day it might work. It might not, that overhead lid is a very stupid design and a very scary thing for a hen. Let them go to roost that night hungry and try again the next day. Whatever you do do not hand feed or give in. The hens will remember that.

If it doesn't work, remove the Grandpa feeder for a week and try again. You have to break the memory of the feeder and break the memory that if they refuse to use it you will give in and feed them.

Honestly, with the Grandpa feeder, it is best to return it to them and buy a more modern feeder that costs half the cost and actually is rat proof and is easy to train with.

Oh, you might look at if it is noisy when the lid comes up and find a way to quiet that down with some padding. Felt bumpers come in all sizes and shapes at Home Depot, hardware section, table leg bumpers and the like.

If you need help with placement of the soft close, use a pencil or marker to mark the travel on the side of the feeder and post a picture.

Good luck.

 

[9d84runner]

Well, with the door open, there is nothing stopping the rats from getting to the feed. Eventually it will happen. The sticky pad was a great idea. And that is a metal door, correct? So at least at night the feed will be safe.

Grandpa feeder... read what I wrote above on why they use the instructions they do for training and how normal decent people blame themselves for the failure at first until the return period is gone.

They do promote a two year guarantee though so....... do it.

You made a great observation, with hens some would learn and teach the others while 4 hens made it far more difficult. It is an old, outdated, and frankly stupid design but it worked for them for a decade as the only competition was a wooden version with the same faults and worse. Then I came along, cut the price by two thirds and made a better feeder. But they still have a following, they still put New Zealand on their feeder despite it being made in China from the very beginning. The fine from the CPS and Customs would be in the millions of dollars if someone pushed the matter.

But plenty of people have had success with the Grandpa feeder and as you already have a lot of money invested you might be able to get it to work. It would be more rat proof than the pvc pipe feeders.

So, you cannot fix the biggest flaw, the overhead guillotine style lid. But you can slow it down. Head over to our website and look at the soft close kits we sell or the soft close feeders. Basically a quality soft close door damper held in a steel bracket made from a strip of galvanized steel. You can find both at Home Depot or Lowes, Simpsons makes all sorts of galvanized straps. Now, figuring out where to mount the cylinder, or cylinders, one on each side. The Grandpa feeder has a side bolt that the treadle rotates on. You want to mark the travel of the metal tube that rotates on the side bolt, find a spot where it is just right. Not too much travel, not too little. You want to use self tapping sheet metal screws to fasten the bracket that holds the soft close cylinder to the side of the feeder with maybe 1/8" of travel on the soft close left, so you have to compress the soft close cylinder. Place one screw in the very end, rotate the bracket down with the cylinder compressed with that 1/8" of travel left unused.

The soft close cylinders will have some adjustment, they will need to be set very light or you will need to balance out the lid with some extra weight fastened on top or up under the lid so there is enough downward pressure to close those two soft close cylinders. You might be able to retrofit a small extension spring on either side too to pull the lid closed instead of using the extra weight.

At least you will slow the lid down so it is less of a threat, give the hens another second to pull their head out, and quieten the action.

Next, tough love. Make sure the feeder is solidly set on three or four patio blocks, screwed to the wall so it is rock solid with zero wiggle or rocking. Fill the feeder and start training.

Cold turkey, full movement from day one. Install the feeder the night before, fill it with feed. Next morning, wait at least two hours so the hens are hungry. Open it with your toe, toss in some treats, let the lid close, and see if one of the hens steps up. If not, open the treadle again and see if one steps up to eat. If so, gently brush her off after three seconds of eating and see if she comes back. Repeat, with the hen opening the feeder. Wait a few minutes to see if she has the hang of it then leave. Even if she doesn't get it, leave after three minutes max.

Come back in two hours and repeat.

At the end of the day it might work. It might not, that overhead lid is a very stupid design and a very scary thing for a hen. Let them go to roost that night hungry and try again the next day. Whatever you do do not hand feed or give in. The hens will remember that.

If it doesn't work, remove the Grandpa feeder for a week and try again. You have to break the memory of the feeder and break the memory that if they refuse to use it you will give in and feed them.

Honestly, with the Grandpa feeder, it is best to return it to them and buy a more modern feeder that costs half the cost and actually is rat proof and is easy to train with.

Oh, you might look at if it is noisy when the lid comes up and find a way to quiet that down with some padding. Felt bumpers come in all sizes and shapes at Home Depot, hardware section, table leg bumpers and the like.

If you need help with placement of the soft close, use a pencil or marker to mark the travel on the side of the feeder and post a picture.

Good luck.

The door is metal. The whole thing is used with recycled metal we had laying around and it didn't really cost us anything since we had the door we were going to use for a different purpose.

We purchased the Grandpa Feeder in July of last year and the only reason I bought it because our neighbor used them for her flock and they worked great for her. My chickens learned how to use the dog door so they could get into the house to eat the dog food so I figured they would be smart enough/not scared buuuut I was wrong.

I will reach out to the Grandpa Feeder company and see what they will do. If they won't take it back then I might consider purchasing the soft close. I should add, they did use the feeder. It was just the last step, it fully working they were afraid. Which didn't make sense to me since they were using it and the lid still sort of moves on the next step.