Rob's New HomeMade Chicken Feeder

[Country Gal]

I'm so inspired! I'm getting the urge to build something this week!

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Quote:
Ouch... that just hurts!

You all mind if I add your feeder pics to the BYC site?

mdbucks, can you take a few more shots of your feeders, maybe close ups of the home-made ones?

Anybody else have homemage feeder pics they want to send me that I can put on the BYC site?

 

[Zenbirder]

Quote:
Sure, go ahead! I forgot to say DH put a slanted board-baffle inside the food hopper at the base so there is no "back corner" for the food to go stale in, it all drops to the front side of the hopper. And no, my girls don't want pink in their decor, they like the rustic/down on the farm look

 

[BirdBrain]

mdbucks,
where is your pink paint? You have to keep up with the Joneses you know...two coats at least.

 

[mdbucks]

I didn't kknow that was the fashion, Mine was natural wood. My whole coop is 1x10 rough cut pine so that is what I made the two little hoppers didn't paint anything, However I do have a FLAMINGO PINK rural Mailbox, and no I didn't get the Idea from Robs feeder, it has been that color for about 2 years now, actuallly it is now a faded pink.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Update:

I noticed this morning that a lot of feed is being "billed out" of the feeder and is on the run floor. I can't say for sure if this is a lot more than I'm use to seeing, but it seems like it.

So, I'm wondering what to do. A few ideas:

1) Put a 1/2 inch hardware cloth over the "tray" so they can only get in enough to peck at a piece at a time instead of getting their whole head in the feed.

2) Put a 2" secondary tray around the main tray to catch any spilled feed

3) Do nothing

What do ya'll think?

 

[mdbucks]

Quote:
4. put another piece on the front so that the level of the food is 2 inches down instead of to the top, then in order to Bill out they have to Bill it 2+inches into the air to get it out

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Yeah... I was thinking about that being an opiton (a higher front lip of the tray) but I want to make sure everyone can get to the feed without problems. Maybe I'll extend a vertical piece of wood an inch or so and see what happens.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

A quick update:

I went about 3 more days with them pulling out about 5 cups of feed and decided I needed to do something. I first added a flimsy piece of wood that helped a little. About 4 days after that I added a nice solid piece of wood that was about 2 inches high. This stopped the "billing out" completely. So much so my wife was worried they couldn't reach the food. To make sure I took a bit of scratch grains and sprinkled them over the feed. The girls all had no problem accessing the feed.

Well, I'm also VERY happy to report that it took until 10/24 for the feed to completely run out. That's more than a month of not having to refill the chicken feeder!

With the auto feeder and auto waterer all I need now is an automatic egg collector and auto security door for the coop!

 

[dlhunicorn]

with the wet weather here in holland I do not dare leave my feed out that long (the natural humidity in the air not to mention the temp changes from day to night ruins the feed) my feeder thus only holds enough for two days ... this way I can be sure the nutritional quality is not compromised and there is no mycotoxin danger.