I recently put my grandpa feeder back with the chickens because the rats are too smart. I have used any trick and trap for them and the rats are out day and night. And about an hour ago I looked at my chicken coop and 2 rats jump on the treadle while the 3rd take the food.
They have a two year no questions guarantee so send that Chinese made feeder back and by a real treadle feeder. The Grandpa feeder was once all there was but it has never been upgraded, probably because they had them made in China since shortly after they started selling them and they didn't want to obsolete their inventory. But it has always been a very, very, poorly designed feeder.
First is the flaw of the overhead door requiring the feeder be blocked open for weeks during training. Then due to safety reasons, the lid has to be feather light or counter balanced to avoid decapitation risks. That means small ground squirrels and most rats can simply push the lid up to get into the feeder, or like your rats have learned, just swarm the treadle if three rats can be called a swarm.
Second there is zero pre loading of the door with a spring to prevent half pound rodents from pushing the door up, or in in the case of most of the other commercial feeders.
Then that wide and close up treadle is another major design flaw. For a treadle feeder to be rat proof it MUST employ a difference in weight between a rodent and a chicken and a difference in reach. Put that treadle way back so even if other rodents cooperate, and with a spring pre loaded door swinging inward it ought to take three to four pounds of weight to operate, the rodents cannot reach the feed.
Another thing about an inward swinging door, it becomes a wonderful rat trap or squirrel trap if initially they swarm the feeder. We had this happen with a commercial flock that bought 20 of our feeders way back around 2014 or so. The first week I had an angry farmer emailing me saying one feeder was swarmed and became packed with rats the first night. They had to empty the smothered rats out and bleach the feeder.The next morning I get another email saying a second feeder had been swarmed but the other feeders including the first swarmed feeder were fine. Now he is less angry and more puzzled. After a week he concluded that once a feeder had smothered a load of rats, the rats refused to mess with it again and he said he would wait and see how this worked out. A month later he emails with the news that his commercial flock was rat free either from the rats killing themselves or from they starving and moving away.
So before spending your hard earned money on a treadle feeder first make sure you have some adult sized birds, can secure the feeder to a wall or post or a substantial chunk of plywood, can keep the small chicks out of the treadle feeder. Then find a feeder that has an inward swinging door, an adjustable spring loaded door to prevent mice from just pushing the door open, and make certain the feeder has a narrow and distant treadle.
And even the best treadle feeder has to be solidly attached to something to prevent it being wobbly and feeling unsafe when the birds use it, the treadle HAS to bottom out on the ground, you HAVE to have a nice size platform that allows the birds to hop up on the platform before pinning down the treadle with one foot while standing on the other foot, and you HAVE to confine the birds the first couple of days and keep them hungry while training. No old feed built up in the deep litter, no free range, no snacks and not giving in. Cold turkey, if you follow the above rules the hens learn in one day or enough will learn to teach the others the next day.
