I'll have to snap a few better photos, but I made a hanging feeder that seems to keep them from spilling/wasting much of their feed. I mostly load it with crumbles, but I'll add in grains/grits/etc. for them as well just to mix it up..... I hate the amount of feed they seem to be able to waste when using dry feed. If anyone has recommendations about how to minimize waste when using dry, please let me know. The girls are currently using crumbles. ....
In the photo you can see the two hanging systems I've got in the coop--water on the right and feed to the left. It's a 2 gal. pail I have used a hole-saw to cut half a dozen (but more would be fine) holes in the lower portion of the walls. Then I cut the very bottom few inches off a 5 gal. pail and joined the two with a simple nut/washer/bolt combo. Using the handle of the pail, I hung it "chicken height" with some chain to the rafters in the barn. Extremely cheap and easy system, and there are dozens of people in these forums with more clever ideas--but this one cost next to nothing and even the time investment was minuscule.
It's easy to peel the lid off the white (2gal) pail and dump feed in, as they eat more, it trickles out through the holes and keeps doing so until it's so low in the pail that it cannot gravity feed. With my 20 birds it lasts quite a few days.
Last edited: