Hello from Janesville WI! What do you have for birds?
Hello welcome to BYC! What are you planning on getting?
[COLOR=333333]OK, I went & cut / pasted some of my past posts.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]So here are my feeders & waterers.....[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]My family made me a treadle feeder as a gift the 1st year I had chickens. (Dad built it while sister & mom did the artwork. Lizard pic b/c I used to raise reptiles.) After 4 years it still works, but I have to occasionally reassemble the lever arm. If I did not have it, I would be considering a pre-made metal one. At one point I added a pointed peak to keep the chickens from sitting on it, but that became a hassle. I simply moved it to a less desirable location without a view, so there's less temptation for birds to sit (& poop) on top of the wooden feeder.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333][COLOR=333333]* Safety Note: With this feeder, I must keep it open or remove it when very young chicks are in the flock. I never had an accident, but I fear it could smash a chick. Works perfectly to keep mice & sparrows out[/COLOR][/COLOR] [COLOR=333333][/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]The other feeders I have work very well because there's no moving parts. The hens must put their heads completely inside to eat, so there's less waste. I fill it up all the way. As the chickens eat the food from the bottom, more from the top & sides fall down.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]I hang them so little critters don't climb up into it & so the chickens do not sit on top (& poop). Not sure if little birds/squirrels could find a way into it or not. I haven't actually seen any try to go inside. I have multiple feeders & hang them in various locations to prevent bullying. I also hang them from trees in the yard (but bring them into the run at night to not feed the wildlife.) I made smaller versions for the chicks, since they're easy & practically free to make.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]
[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]Below is a smaller chick feeder version made from a nut container. I later added a handle to hang it. Hanging is great because its so easy to adjust the height as the chicks grow. My chicks start to use this at 5 days old. (Their necks need to grow a tiny bit before they can reach the food.)[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]
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[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]I cut the female end off the bottom to make a lip for the front.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]
[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]PS- Neither of these ideas were originally mine. The treadle plans were found here on Backyard chickens & the feeder was from
.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]There's no need to buy extra stuff for chicks. IMO- the home made stuff often works better.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]For waterers, I use chicken nipples, a drill, & something found in the recycle bin. [/COLOR] [COLOR=333333][COLOR=B42000][/COLOR][/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]Need to drill holes in the cap for the nipples to work properly. Scrap wire, string, clips, etc. used to hang at the correct height[/COLOR]
.[COLOR=333333][COLOR=0000FF]****BTW- I really want to see a pic of @chickendreams24 [/COLOR] [COLOR=333333][COLOR=0000FF]'s nipple waterer! I think you could enter a photo/ funny caption contest with it.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR]
For my flock I use 5 gal buckets. In the summer I hang them around the yard. I also put out a plastic waterer from a feed store. (I think the chickens prefer to dip their beaks.) In winter here, those open waterers are dangerous for frostbite. [COLOR=333333]My winter set up uses horiz nipples & a heater. (Has auto on & off to keep water liquid.) The heater was the expensive part but we've used it 4 yrs w/o problems. Keeps the water liquid even on those -30'F nights. The 1st winter I used vertical nipples & they leaked when in use, so an ice patch developed below the waterer. They also froze up around the single digits - even though the water in the 5 gal bucket was still liquid. I do not heat the coop at all, so this works well for us.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]* Our water has minerals, so some residue had to periodically be cleaned off of the heating element. Last winter as well as this year I filled up gal jugs of water from our sink- which has a faucet mount filter. It worked better than I could have hoped![/COLOR] [COLOR=333333][/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]Horizontal nipples are better in winter because they do not freeze up easily. On a very rare [COLOR=333333]occasion[/COLOR] the metal piece of the nipple may stick/freeze, but I found that the chickens simply pecked at it to get the water flowing again.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]
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[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]*Since we now have 2 bantams, I added a brick on one side as a step for the little ones.[/COLOR] [COLOR=333333]The only place I have found these horiz nipples is online (ebay & amazon) Vertical nipples are easily found in feed stores & big box farm stores, as well as online.[/COLOR]
lol yeah I need to snap some pics of it! Our original one leaked so it was replaced thankfully after the new years party we had another empty bottle. The new one does not leak. Also our feed store has just begun carrying the vertical nipples and killing cones which I'm glad to see. The killing cones are a little smaller that our big one we had to send away for and we want to get one of them for ease of processing the smaller birds. DING DONG!!! The rat is dead!!! Lol okay for those who don't know or don't remember we have been fighting this rotten thing since last summer when it ate through the concrete in our porch multiple times. We kept pouring fresh concrete. We believe it finally managed to eat it's way through the foundation and down into our crawl space below our porch, kitchen and laundry room. We only saw it twice over the summer. Then the holes stopped being dug(I'm talking huge holes here!) And we figured it had moved on or been killed by the concrete. In the fall we lost a 4-6 week olive egger chick to something that tried to drag it through a one inch gap in the grow out in one of our buildings. When it couldn't drag the chick anymore it had begun to eat it. We placed boards all along the crack but three days later we found another chick, this one 10 weeks and not the smallest, with similar injuries to its legs and hocks. I had been doing loads of research and decided that it had to be the rat. The chicks were immediately moved to another run inside the coop that has a concrete foundation that goes up nearly a foot. Before winter set in we went in for new tires and they informed us that something was tearing the insulation out of the hood of our car(if it didnt stop it would cost hundreds of dollars)the person thought mice. We park by the porch and immediately knew it was the rat. We set out traps and sat up to try and shoot it. No luck. Around Christmas we discovered that the rat was in our house! But had not redug the hole under the porch. As snow flew we discovered how. Apparently when the rat had last been stuck under the porch it had managed to get up into a wall and climb all the way up and found a previous dryer vent hole in the wall and gotten into our home. The dryer vent had never been patched on the inside as this house doesn't belong to us idk why, but it was on the outside. It had dined on a 20+lb box of dog treats, ate the whole box. Meanwhile our indoor cats were trying to tell us what was going on and it wasn't until I saw it that I knew. Our cats while excellent mousers didn't know what to make of this nuclear sized "mouse" lol Not wanting to use poison BC of our cats dogs and chickens plus the wild animals that are around we set out traps, well hidden, and covered the ones in the open with old metal milk crates assuring only a rodent could get to them. We could see the hole going down through the insulation but had no idea where it went. Boy I would have loved to have some high tech gizmos then. Lol. We had traps set and baited. Nothing for days. And then snap!.... We caught a Mouse! A mouse?! No way! DH2B thought I was nuts! Lol he laughed so hard when all we caught was a mouse. Well before we had purchased rat traps he had set a mouse trap and it had been triggered but we never caught anything. I told him there's no way a mouse trap would catch the rat and that all it would do was make the rat wary but he thought it was worth a try. A couple of days later we got a fresh snow fall and coming out from under our big fuel tank right next to the foundation of thw house were tracks running all the way to the garage. Tracks we couldn't identify. We decided they must be that rat. DH2B looked and sure enough another hole. That rat had gone up into the house but it had also managed to dig down under the foundation and come out in a hidden area. By this time the rat was very wary. We never saw it in the house again and we kept hoping. And setting traps. During this same time period our chicken coop was invaded by mice but we also feared by rat(s) as well. We haven't previously had problems with rodents in the coop. Many traps in the coop have come up empty but triggered. The car had gotten worse. Then today DH2B leaves after lunch and there laying below the car is the rat's dead body. It must have been caught off guard in the car this morning probably when he left and was killed by the engine. The rat is dead! Drinks for everybody!!! Lol I'm so relieved I am just glad it won't be there anymore and hopefully there are no more. Second chick that the rat attacked is still alive and can stand and walk but he's still not a sure thing. He's a gentle lavender orp and he's very sweet. His legs seem normal but he does have problems we hope it's only due to muscle atrophy after having such severe injuries. We have had an EE under the weather for the last couple of days. Her name is Belle and she's one of our original girls. I believe it's crop related and have been doing crop massages and pushing fluids. We will be separating her in a crate tonight and see how she is in the morning. She's a very beautiful sweet girl and I'm worried we'll lose her.
