My Chickens are Dog Food-aholics

[jessied1227]

So, what can I do? We have a dog who is free-range like my chickens. He's proved himself trust-worthy with the girls, so we let him go.

We are yet to find a place where we can place the food and keep it from the chickens, but still have it accessable to the dog. Same trouble with the cat food. All of our animals are outside all the time, so keeping it inside is not an option.

Our cats come and go, so we have one of those gravity feeders, so does the dog, he's always around the house, but is a large breed/high energy dog, so he has free choice of puppy chow also with a gravity feeder.

My 12 girls can empty both feeders in an afternoon - and the dog and cats are going hungry!

So, how do you all keep your food away from your chickens?

Thanks-
Jess

 

[silkiechicken]

Well. I had to ditch the all day feeder method for the cat. She only gets food when she asks now and I have to stand there with her since the chickens chase her away. Could you train your dogs and cats to press a lever to let food out? That should at least stall the chickens before they learn to jump on it.

Another thought is, put the feeders higher than the bird's heads so they don't see it. I confused the egg out of the hens for a few weeks when I put the food dish on the top of a 5 gallon bucket and they didn't think to jump up to knock it off to get the food.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I guess that would at least slow down the chickens...

http://www.sitstay.com/store/toys/toysd.shtml#GI499

Or would they just keep an eye on the other pets and mob them after the dispenser was activated???