Little birds eating our feed

[tom e]

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Do your chickens go to public school or private school? Just curious (hehe!)

I wish. I'd pack them a small lunch each and call it a day. Problem solved.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

tom e, I had a bad problem with wild birds getting into my coop too. A curtain over the pop door helped keep most species out. You can see what I did to keep wild birds out of the coop down near the bottom of my byc page. You could also build a treadle feeder. I no longer feed the wild birds and my chickens have food available at all times. See plans in my sig.

 

[centrarchid]

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Tom e,

I had similar problem this winter. My response was to feed chickens what they could readily consume in about 20 minutes which is enough to fill crop. This leaves little for songbirds. Then feed similar amount in evening just prior to chickens going to roost. The ration is restricted which can impact egg production unless they can compensate by foraging. My free-ranging flock of 20 birds exhausted their forage base on a 1 acre patch back in December and have since had to expand foraging over a 3 acre area which indicates your birds might be in same boat with only 1/3 acre of foraging area. Now that weather warming up forage base is starting to crank up and foraging range of chickens is contracting. Egg production in my case was maintained throughout.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I mentioned that your egg size may drop. Egg size is not guaranteed to drop. It might, but it might not. I think that would be the worst possible consequence of your plan, at least until they ran out of forage.

I'm trying to envision 1/3 acre, about 100' x 150' area. For 16 chickens, that's a little less than 1000 square feet per chicken. It will take them a while to wipe that out, if they can. That is going to depend a lot on your climate and time of year.

 

[Kaneke]

I had a problem with wild birds getting into the feed I had out for my free-ranging hens with chicks

just by luck, I came up with a partial solution -- I got several of those glass cookie jars that look like fishbowls turned partly on their sides

for some reason, the wild birds would not eat out of those -- maybe the reflections bothered them -- but the hens and chicks ate out of them with no problem (yes, the littlest chicks went right into the glass containers, but the hens clucked them out)

also kept the feed dry during moderate rain showers, and it was easy to see when they needed refilling

may depend on what sort of native birds you are dealing with --- these kept pigeons, mynahs, sparrows, cardinals, and thrushes out

(did help that the rooster was on patrol while the hens and chicks were feeding)

elevating the fishbowl/cookie jars so that hens can reach but the littlest birds cannot, might work even better

 

[centrarchid]

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Winter time my birds crop of the good stuff really fast. Even during summer months, a 1/3 acre patch would grazed pretty hard. My birds effectively eleminate the larger insects not only where they forage but also some distance outside where the birds actually forage. This especially obvious with insects of intermediate mobility such as grasshoppers and crickets.

Plant community also affected.

 

[tom e]

Thanks all. That's given me lots of good stuff to think about. Through this year we've been here, they haven't been able to kill off plants in their range, but it has been an exceptionally wet year for us. I didn't even consider the quality of forage, just figured we were good as long as they didn't turn the yard into dirt..
I think I will try this out and just see if I see production drop. I'm getting between 8 and 12 eggs a day now.

Thanks for brainstorming with me.

 

[CluckyJay]

How about these?

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=56638-building-a-treadle-feeder

 

[centrarchid]

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I may try that myself. It will upset oppossums since they like their food wet. It would like to have is elevated so birds have to work a little to get eats.

 

[tom e]

I can make some things, but mostly my handiness extends to things that don't need to "operate" lol. Ive been thinking if I wind up having to go that route, I'll buy that "grandpas feeder" that was mentioned a couple threads below.

That's a definite possibility, in other words..