How much do your birds eat?

[s98330q]

mine self feed from a 30 gallon trash can. I install 240# of high quality locally made feed every quarter. I have 10 hens. You do the math. But your mileage may vary.

 

[Ferd Berfel]

As for waste, let their feeders go empty and they will clean up everything they have dropped. That’s what chickens do, scratch for food. They forage. If you turned them loose and no predators were around to kill them, they wouldn’t starve. They would find food. They only waste food if you over feed them.

 

[Vicker]

Wow, I've had up to 30 chickens at one time and never went through 50 pounds of food in a week. Even when they aren't free-ranging, they don't eat that much. They do have a very large area of grass to roam on. I give them kitchen and garden scraps, and in winter I throw scratch around to give them something to do. I find that they eat and waste the crumbled feed much more than pellets. We've got a wooden gravity feeder attached inside the coop that can be filled from the top. There is a guard across the bottom where the feed collects. It allows them to stick their heads in but they can't scratch it out with their feet. I have 20 now and I probably use 50 pounds a month during the winter and less than that in the summer.

 

[kmk]

I only have 8 chickens so can't say about the amount of food, but we made a feeder like this one: https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...lon-25-feed-bucket-feeder-for-about-3.834227/ and have had zero wasted food since.View attachment 2502668

Could you explain a little more please (I don't have chickens yet). Do they stick their head in a pipe to get food? How did you feed them when they were young? Thanks.

 

[Queen of Chaos Ranch]

I am new to owning chickens. I have about 25 birds (LOL). I’d like to get a gauge of how much anyone else’s flock eats. Preferably if yours is the same size as mine. I go through a 50 lb bag of feed a week with mine and it just seems like WOW a lot. Or am I wrong? I notice a lot of waste on the floor and I’m trying different things to remedy that. Any tips for me? I have the food in a 15 lb hanging feeder I only keep about half full. Only 10 birds are adults. The other 15 are about 3 months old. Thanks!

I have 21 hens and when they eat only layer pellets they go through 50# a week.

 

[jreardon1918]

We buy a 50 pound bag roughly every month. We record the day we open a new one. We have 6 girls now. Three of them are 8 months. Three are almost four years old. Here is how we record food consumption.

 

[RubelliteRose]

Could you explain a little more please (I don't have chickens yet). Do they stick their head in a pipe to get food? How did you feed them when they were young? Thanks.

They do stick their heads in the pipes to eat. We have the bucket elevated on a block so the pipe is about even with their backs. We made the bucket feeder when they were around 12 weeks old. We used a standard mason jar chick feeder when they were babies and tried using a rectangular tupperware style container with holes cut in the side when they were a little older. Neither of those worked very well as they were dumped over multiple times a day. We still haven't decided what to use for this years new chicks.
Here are the detailed directions I followed to make the bucket feeder

I come bearing pictures of how to make this feeder with a 90-degree street elbow (hub & spigot) per LoneOak's instructions. (Hope I got it right!)

This is the street elbow with a hub end (the big part) and a spigot end (the narrower part with the flange). This method won't work with a plain 90-degree street elbow because the parts won't fit into one another at the end (you'll see) (EDIT: I was wrong about this, a regular street elbow without a flange will also work!). I had to check online before I purchased it because not all Home Depot's carry them. Here's a link to the product: http://www.homedepot.com/p/NIBCO-3-...Street-Elbow-C48072HD3/100347226#.UnBRP3BwpLc



I started by cutting off the hub end right where it meets the pipe. I didn't need to make another cut after this because after I had cut the hub off, the cut end was still a 90-degree angle to the spigot end, which would allow it to be parallel to the floor of the bucket after installation.



To determine where to cut my hole, I put a scrap piece of 1"x2" under the cut end of the elbow (to ensure the pipe is 3/4" off the floor of the bucket after installation) and traced the hole on the outside of the bucket.



After I cut my hole I put the spigot end (the narrow bit) through the hole. You can see below the flange doesn't allow it to move any farther outside the bucket, which is good.



Here you can see the spigot end coming out of the bucket and the hub that I will flip around and put over the spigot to keep the elbow from falling back in the bucket.



And here it is! No glue required, it's a tight fit. There's a little play in the elbow but it can't fall in or out of the bucket so it still works. I opted for the fancy screw-top for my bucket but if I had gone with a plain lid I could have made this for a total of $10 and about 15 minutes.

 

[s98330q]

mine self feed from a 30 gallon trash can. I install 240# of high quality locally made feed every quarter. I have 10 hens. You do the math. But your mileage may vary.

My wife informed me its 120# every quarter. Sorry for the wrong info....

 

[joydix]

I am new to owning chickens. I have about 25 birds (LOL). I’d like to get a gauge of how much anyone else’s flock eats. Preferably if yours is the same size as mine. I go through a 50 lb bag of feed a week with mine and it just seems like WOW a lot. Or am I wrong? I notice a lot of waste on the floor and I’m trying different things to remedy that. Any tips for me? I have the food in a 15 lb hanging feeder I only keep about half full. Only 10 birds are adults. The other 15 are about 3 months old. Thanks!

I have 22 adults. About 50% bantams maybe a tad less I’d have to make a list! I use about 50# every 2 weeks. I keep their 3 gal feeder 1/2 full all the time. In summer more full but rainy season I don’t want it to absorb too much humidity to prevent spoilage. I long for a flock of 10 but I can’t help myself. I have 3 7wk old babies joining flock as we speak. Barred rock, autralorp and EE.

 

[KJsFlock]

I am new to owning chickens. I have about 25 birds (LOL). I’d like to get a gauge of how much anyone else’s flock eats. Preferably if yours is the same size as mine. I go through a 50 lb bag of feed a week with mine and it just seems like WOW a lot. Or am I wrong? I notice a lot of waste on the floor and I’m trying different things to remedy that. Any tips for me? I have the food in a 15 lb hanging feeder I only keep about half full. Only 10 birds are adults. The other 15 are about 3 months old. Thanks!

I have about 25 chickens. I have aluminum garbage cans that hold 3 50 pound bags of pellets. It takes 6-8 weeks for them to empty the can. They are free range, so they eat a lot less in the summer when they are busy scrounging for worms and bugs. I found I have much less waste feeding pellets. I also have 3 feeders in their coop, which keeps them from bickering over the food. They get about 4 cups of cracked corn almost every day that I toss out on the ground for them. I holler "chickens!" and they all come running. During the winter I have a chicken treat block in their coop and when it's really cold and snowy out, I close them inside the coop and give them a frozen cabbage which they love.