I paid big $$$ for 2 treadle feeders from Premier 1 Called smart feeder. Waste of money. I found a rat caught in the trough the other day. The door hadn't quite closed all the way. The chickens bail the food out with their beaks. The tough fills up TOOOO much and the hens like to eat out of the ends of the trough and flick the feed away until it builds up high enough to spill over the edge. I put out motion detector lights in from of the treadles That keeps them away at night but not during the day. And my chickens don't chase them away either.
I was using ex-lax and duculaz tablets but they stopped eating that. So now I am mixing oxocodone and Ativan in cat food. They snatch the can under the coop and I can't see if they are eating it or not. I have found 2 dead rats, But I know. I have more. I am moving my coop onto a cement pad. That will take care of one "home".
The rats I have won't touch any commercial rat bait. Waste of money there too.
Yeah, those so called "smart feeders" are a new design but basically some old mechanisms cobbled together. Too complex, not enough spring tension on the door to keep the rats from just pushing it open and climbing in side. But at least they copied my feeder and put a spring on the door, they just did a poor job of doing it.
I haven't seen one of those "smart feeders" in person but I am not surprised they allow feed to pile up. That is quite tricky designing a feeder to do that which is why my feeder has a 4" tall lower front panel and a 1/2" wide lip protruding into the feed bin to stop raking feed out of the feeder.. Even then every three or four months you will hear from a customer that has a hen that will defeat even that and they order and install one of our feeder lip extenders that adds about 1.25" in height, that stops the old biddies.
One thing you might try on the smart feeders, make sure they are attached solidly to a wall or post to cut down on the vibration from the door slamming shut. You can also choke off part of the feed throat up inside the feeder, a strip of cardboard will do. Check it for a few days and remove a bit of cardboard till you have it allowing enough feed to get through but not too much.
Oxocodone and cat food, not sure if that will kill them or make them very happy and laid back and coming back for more. You get an A for creativity though.
The rats will happily tunnel under the concrete pad. You could sink the foundation six feet into the ground and they would just make their tunnels out side the pad.
I always tell people to check the reviews on the treadle feeders including my feeder. The in house reviews are worthless, most shopping carts allow you to approve reviews or reject them.
Amazon is more interested in making their 15% commission and the huge fees so they have vast loop holes in their reviews. The only time a product gets yanked is when too many returns happen. But there are plenty of reviews on treadle feeders online. Just ignore the ones that have
Amazon links, they are affiliate members and get a nice commission from feeding customers into the
Amazon pipeline. We have an affiliate program on our shopping cart but we do not use it because it creates a moral hazard for people that review the feeder on their blog.
