Icelandic Chickens

[AK Michelle]

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The saw horse feeder is working great. I actually removed the screen and i find as long as I juveniles dow there they clean up the spillage while the bigger birds eat out of the trough. It has really been working out well.

Hmmm, like Kathy, I have a hanging feeder. I thought making it higher would discourage the waste. Maybe I'm going the wrong way... I'll try setting it on the floor and see what happens. Thanks!

 

[AK Michelle]

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[kathyinmo]

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I have tried everything with those hanging feeders, Michelle. Hanging, on the ground, and elevated. The lip just is not high enough. Nella made some bucket feeders using oil pans, which have a higher lip. I think I may try that. I will look for her picture.

I have several of these too. Maybe wire over them would help?

 

[speckledhen]

Kathy, under some of my hanging feeders, I have those catch basins you get for putting under water heaters, the big round rubber ones made to catch overflow. At least most of the feed spilled ends up in it and you can scrape shavings out of that, so at least the feed is contained in something. One of them in the main coop has one of the big plastic square pans made to go under a washing machine, made for the same purpose, to catch leaks from the washer. My Panda loves to just shovel out feed. Every once in awhile, I hang the feeder too high for them to reach it so they have to eat all the feed out of the pan.

 

[kathyinmo]

Here is an old post of Nella's, showing the bucket feeders............

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[jeremy]

I made almost exactly what Nella has, it works really well. I don't really have any food wasted on the ground now at all.

 

[The Sheriff]

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That little stinker was just getting used to his new surroundings. He had been crowing here for quite a while. He kind of chose the times to crow carefully because the darker roo was bigger and more dominant. Now that he is gone, the two smaller ones are croaking out a crow now and then. Hubby keeps asking when I am getting rid of them. They are housed sort of under the bedroom window.

 

[tazcat70]

Umm maybe I am a bad chicken keeper, but here is what I do about the feed. For 6 days of the week I feed at my normal time, on the 7th day, I feed later. This way they look harder to find the feed and clean up what they have been throwing around all week.

 

[The Sheriff]

The guy who owns the feed store where I used to shop hates chickens. He told me when he was growing up their chickens wasted a lot of feed. He told me that they routinely took the feeder out for a few days until they cleaned up the spillage. I admit that I do not re-fill my feeder since he told me that until they eat the stuff off the floor. Mind you, my feeders are well away from roosting areas and the floor isn't majorly poopy. In fact it is really bare linoleum because they move all the shavings out of the area around the feeder. It irks me to clean the coop out and have to lift out 50# of spilled food on the floor. I struggled enough to get the 50# bag out there in the first place!

 

[LarryPQ]

This is what I do too. When the buckets are empty, I wait a day to let them clean up the spillage.

I also have walking platforms in the coop, and bunch of the food gets tossed in there. So I will move the platforms over 2 feet and let the chooks go nuts.