The waste! Oh the wasted feed...

[larissap112]

This is the feeder I'm using for three 12 week old chickens, hanging at their chest height, with crumble:



And dang if they don't knock it around, send it swinging, eat like animals (oh, wait...) and knock at least a third if not more of the feed all over the bottom of the coop.

I tried fermenting feed for a while, but it's too much daily work, and it kept molding.

I've got 50 lbs of crumble to go through before I can switch to pellets I suppose, but I don't like the idea of pellets, it just seems so...boring and rabbit foodish. And will they work with this feeder? Will they still be knocked around?

And why don't they eat that dang crumble off the floor before heading back to the feeder? (Because they aren't intelligent humans, I know, it was rhetorical, lol.)

I hate all this waste!




Any suggestions?

 

[larissap112]

Hey guys, I thought I'd update this thread to show you my final solution.

It really was so dang simple, so cheap, so easy.

All that was needed was simply to raise the lip. That's it. the trough was just too shallow, making it easy for the birds to scatter the feed in their frenzy.

Now, how to raise it? I didn't want something stiff that could actually harm them.

DUCT TAPE is the answer to EVERYTHING. And while I was at it, I got a nice girly pattern.

This trick also worked very well on the baby chick feeder!

I now have ZERO waste. ZERO. By simply adding a nice, flexible, washable rim.

 

[zuluchicken]

This is my home made automated feeder. I have almost no waste regardless of which food I am using.

This is what I have used.

1. 5Lt water bottle mounted upside down with the bottom cut out.
2. 60mm PVC drain pipe. It fits perfectly over the mouth of the bottle and mounted to the stand. I used different thickness of timber as spacers in order to line the bottle and the drain pipe up and to create space for the receiver.
3. For the receiver I used a piece of 40cm PVC rain gutter that I had mounted on a flat piece of timber as a base. The ends of the gutter were closed of gutter stop ends.
4. The flow of the food is adjusted by inserting different thickness spacers underneath the receiver in order to adjust the gap between the mouth of the drain pipe and the bottom of the gutter. The gap must be small enough to prevent the food from freely running into the gutter. The chickens must eat (peck) it out from underneath the pipe which results in almost no spillage. It works well for all types of dry food. It also keeps the chickens occupied.
5. The 5Lt water bottle holds enough food for 11 fully grown Buff Orpingtons for 2 days. I would like to fit a larger container at the top so that I can increase the feeding period to one week.

Hope this helps. It is easy and cheap to make and it works very effectively. Try and make the container at the top as big as possible right from the beginning.

 

[Daedalus62]

For what it's worth, my 2 cents...

Never had much trouble with spillage (like someone mentioned back there, feeders must be hanged at chickens backs height), but I had with wild birds (namely a flock of wild turtledoves) that ate more than the chickens...

After trying a different number of things (and killing two birds with one stone

), I've made my version of the trigger-feeder... Simple to make, no waste (chickens only peck as much as they eat) and no parasite (wild birds or rats, for example) feeding because they just can't reach it!... For me, best feeder ever!!

The one I made... Corn in there, but it works just as well with feed or pellets... I have it hanging from a tree.



Cheers

 

[snow5164]

My only suggestion is fermented feed, it is sticky doesn't fly anywhere and expandes so you use less .a little bit of work? Yes but the time saves you

Put it in a plastic rain gutter and your all set!!!

This photos is from a member of byc.

 

[Mahlzeit]

Yes pellets will work with that feeder. I honestly prefer pellets because they are not as easy to knock out of the feeder and if they do they find them on the floor and eat them unlike the crumbles.

 

[enola]

The bottom of the hanging feeder needs to be at the height of their back or a teensy bit higher.

 

[Jeremy Wingate]

this is the design that i use for my chickens with crumble feed and it works great with little waste


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...te-5-gallon-25-feed-bucket-feeder-for-about-3

 

[pdirt]

Sometimes minor modifications are in order. I made this "hole-y" insert for our treadle feeder and it has pretty much stopped the feed waste:

 

[larissap112]

this is the design that i use for my chickens with crumble feed and it works great with little waste


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...te-5-gallon-25-feed-bucket-feeder-for-about-3

This...is the holy grail of spill free feeders. THANK YOU.