I am feeding my babies grower crumbles at this point and their feeder is outside in their run. they have a 40 pound feeder and their crumbles mostly end up on the floor. Is there anything i can do or build that can prevent all this feed from going to waste? Please share your ideas! Thanks a ton!
try placing a piece of hardware wire over the crumbles if you can. You will need a piece with half inch spacing. That way they can get a mouth full, but they shouldn't be able to fling it around.
Some use a big oil pan or catch pan of some kind under the feeder which allows them to clean up the spilled feed. They are only motivated to do that if they've no feed in the regular feeder. While convenient, large quantity feeders must have precautionary grills or something to prevent beaking of feed. Having 40 lbs in there just means there's a whole lot more feed to waste.
Something I do when simply trying to maintain birds is provide a restricted ration where the amount applied to feeder is slightly less than they will consume in a day. Then a much lesser amount of scratch mixed with BOSS is applied to allow them to top off crop for night. This best using a higher end main diet. I have been watching my birds' weight during initial steps of this and found the birds eat a lot more than they need just to stay at a healthy weight. Once birds are more than 3/4 their mature weight I also apply formulated feed as pellets rather than crumble. Over feeding also presents problems beyond waste. Spilled feed provides nurishment for rodents that damage housing and attracts unwanted guest like oppossums and racoons that will then target birds.
