Small birds eating my chicken feed

[Leraje]

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.

Here the sparrows eat the pellets just as happily

 

[cmom]

I guess I'm lucky because they don't bother my feed. I do have feeders for the wild birds.

 

[speedy2020]

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.

My DIY wood treater feeder require 1.5lbs to open.

 

[Al Gerhart]

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.

If you have rats blocking the treadle with a stone helps at night but the rats just start eating during the day. For years the grandpa feeder was all there was except the homemade plywood treadle feeders that swelled up or got chewed into. These days it is old technology and a poor investment.

 

[Leraje]

If you have rats blocking the treadle with a stone helps at night but the rats just start eating during the day. For years the grandpa feeder was all there was except the homemade plywood treadle feeders that swelled up or got chewed into. These days it is old technology and a poor investment.

Ah no we have a small garden and the feeder is in sight of the house, we know that there's no rats there during the day Sounds like you're salespitching a bit heavily btw.