Small birds eating my chicken feed

[Unsworth]

I have a lot of small birds swooping into my walk in chicken house. I am tired of them eating my chicken feed. I have a chain link fence surrounding the yard and netting completely covering the yard to keep out hawks. Any ideas to keep small birds out of a chicken house? Chicken feed is too expensive to feed the entire neighborhood of birds.

 

[ArcherChaos]

there are those weight triggered feeders ive seen, might be something to look into

 

[speedy2020]

Install a threader feeder or move the feeder into the coop. The goal is to force the bird stay way from the chicken coop.

 

[Leraje]

there are those weight triggered feeders ive seen, might be something to look into

We've got one of those and it works a treat. The sparrows still try to join the chickens when they're eating, but at least when they're not on the 'step', the birds can't get to the food. Also works against mice and supposedly also against rats - though I'm fairly certain that they're smart enough to push open the lid anyway.

 

[Unsworth]

there are those weight triggered feeders ive seen, might be something to look into

I will look into the weight triggered feeders.

 

[Unsworth]

We've got one of those and it works a treat. The sparrows still try to join the chickens when they're eating, but at least when they're not on the 'step', the birds can't get to the food. Also works against mice and supposedly also against rats - though I'm fairly certain that they're smart enough to push open the lid anyway.

I have wondered about mice, too. Thanks.

 

[Mamatomany123]

Install a threader feeder or move the feeder into the coop. The goal is to force the bird stay way from the chicken coop.

We did this and the little sparrow filled up my coop. They didnt care. My girls are now bigger and have killed the few sparrows that have gotten in. I covered the entire run in bird netting and its helped tremendously.

 

[Al Gerhart]

We've got one of those and it works a treat. The sparrows still try to join the chickens when they're eating, but at least when they're not on the 'step', the birds can't get to the food. Also works against mice and supposedly also against rats - though I'm fairly certain that they're smart enough to push open the lid anyway.

The majority of the treadle feeders are easily pushed open by mice, rats, and ground squirrels or chipmunks. For a treadle feeder to be rat proof you need three things; a narrow and distant step so the short critters cannot reach the feed from the treadle, a heavy counterweight to keep the door firmly closed, and a spring to pre load the door so that even a few large rats cannot gang up on the door and push it open.

Marketing usually wins out over engineering though so the majority of treadle feeders marketed have wide treadle steps. And profits win out over function too so few feeders will have a counterweight or spring load the door. To do a treadle feeder right costs quite a bit of labor and materials and the return on sales generally isn't much. But you can slap together a cheap to produce feeder, spend the money on a pretty box, and give Amazon 30% of the sale and clean up for a few years. The reason is few people actually have rodent or wild bird problems, they just needed a chicken feeder, so they will give glowing reviews and another 20 to 30% will buy the item thinking that having a 50% positive review rating is a good thing.

Do your research by finding independent sites that aren't linked back to Amazon products, and solve the wild bird problem.

 

[cmom]

I'm assuming you are feeding your birds crumbles. I switched my birds to pellets. Some of the birds rebelled but when they were hungry enough they ate the pellets.

 

[Leraje]

The majority of the treadle feeders are easily pushed open by mice, rats, and ground squirrels or chipmunks. For a treadle feeder to be rat proof you need three things; a narrow and distant step so the short critters cannot reach the feed from the treadle, a heavy counterweight to keep the door firmly closed, and a spring to pre load the door so that even a few large rats cannot gang up on the door and push it open.

Marketing usually wins out over engineering though so the majority of treadle feeders marketed have wide treadle steps. And profits win out over function too so few feeders will have a counterweight or spring load the door. To do a treadle feeder right costs quite a bit of labor and materials and the return on sales generally isn't much. But you can slap together a cheap to produce feeder, spend the money on a pretty box, and give Amazon 30% of the sale and clean up for a few years. The reason is few people actually have rodent or wild bird problems, they just needed a chicken feeder, so they will give glowing reviews and another 20 to 30% will buy the item thinking that having a 50% positive review rating is a good thing.

Do your research by finding independent sites that aren't linked back to Amazon products, and solve the wild bird problem.

Ours is heavy enough to keep out mice, but I think not heavy enough for rats, like you said. We tend to put a stone under it at night to make sure the rats can't get to it then.