Treadle chicken feeder

[mun5]

Hi

I wonder why baby chicks are often not fed from treadle feeders. Beside of the chicks' light weight, are there other reasons? Is it actually a good idea to feed them using treadle feeders?

Cheers

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

You've hit the nail on the head -- the small size/weight of chicks makes the use of treadle feeders impractical for them. Having a feeder that sensitive to weight would lead to potential issues of harm given that a relatively small shift in weight would cause a shift up or down of the lid.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Had meant to add -- one of the reasons many use treadle feeders is that it eliminates the issue of pests accessing the feed, this is due to most of the feed seeking pests being smaller/lighter than the birds you *do* want getting to the feed. This would be another point where having to adjust the sensitivity of the treadle to such a "light" point (if it were even possible to get it set to sense the weight of one chick) would make the advantage of a treadle a moot point.

 

[Al Gerhart]

That is a good question.

A treadle feeder, properly designed, works on two principles:

A. An adult chicken weighs a lot more than rat.
B. An adult chicken has a much longer reach than a rat.

So a chick won't have either, any treadle that would allow a chick to eat will also allow a rat to eat. And rats eat chicks.

Treadle feeders are also quite dangerous to chicks as they will hop up inside the feeder and be killed or trapped.

I have looked at trying to come up with a feeder but it would have to be electronic, pattern recognizing or something of that sort. Possible, but it would be quite expensive and electronics in a dusty, dirty, coop? And prone to failure, that a mechanical feeder would never experience. Even then, once the feeder opened the rats would flood in.

In the end, choking off the feed supply from a nest of rats with chicks in the coop is a really, really, bad idea anyway.