Treadle Feeders and Slow Chickens

[Ranopova]

Hi All,
We have a treadle feeder and have removed all other food sources. The chooks were using the feeder fine, until we moved it to the first training stage. The feeder is open a bit but there is movement in the lid and the foot plate. it has now been 5 days and they are clearly starving but showing no signs of using the feeder. They are terrified of it! I have used my toe to hold it open and they will hop on and feed (less so now as they are frightened of the the whole thing) but as soon as they notice any movement, they run away and won't use it on their own. Help!! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I don't know whether to stick it out or abandon the whole thing. My girls are hungry!

 

[MissChick@dee]

They need to be able to eat. Perhaps give them a choice old vs. new. They don’t like change and need to be eased into it. Please don’t let them starve.

 

[Ranopova]

They need to be able to eat. Perhaps give them a choice old vs. new. They don’t like change and need to be eased into it. Please don’t let them starve.

NO I can't bare to see them starve, they are free ranging so can find something to eat there and that is why I prop it open with my toe so that they can eat.

 

[50-45-1]

I read an older post on this same issue and they recomended to prop the feeder open for a week. Then shorten the prop an inch at a time so the lid moves when they step on the lever. Soon the movemrnt of the lid will not scare them anymore.
Let us know how this works out for you!
Good luck!

 

[Al Gerhart]

Arrrggghhhhhh! This is obviously a guillotine style if it has training bolts and most of the reputable sellers will warn you that it takes two to three weeks to acclimate the birds to the movement of the treadle. But blocking ANY treadle feeder open is a huge mistake. You are teaching the birds that the treadle is not supposed to move!

Follow the instructions. I sell one version of feeder that is a guillotine style, our MA2017 (Marie Antoinette, if they can't live like royalty they can die like royalty), not a lot of them, a few hundred sold so far, and they will work if you are patient but it is going to take at least two weeks or more for most flocks. Still, you cannot block the feeder open on that feeder. Stick something in so the lid doesn't close all the way, the lid moves when they step on the treadle so they know that the lid is supposed to move but they can see the feed. Most of those we sell from Ebay which is a tough crowd to sell to and we have never had a return so people are making do with the cheaper guillotine style feeder.

But the biggest error is allowing the birds to free range before they learn to use the feeder. Chickens are prey animals and afraid of anything new in their world so they will fill up on grass before they take a chance on sticking their head under a lid that goes up and down. Coop them up, no other food, no old food in the litter, no free range. After a few hours try to train by using your toe to show them where the food is located, maybe toss some treats in there. If you have no takers, go do something for a few hours and come back.

You don't have to starve the birds overnight if the feeder is installed rock solid, properly assembled, and you follow that particular feeder's training instructions. In my experience, it has always been the people that are the hardest to train, get the birds hungry and they will use a properly designed treadle feeder.

 

[noregerts]

We switched to a treadle feeder recently when we realized by using a trail-cam at night how many rats we were feeding! My hens resisted the heck out of the feeder at first and so it took at least 3 weeks before they were all eating out of it. Now, we may still have rats but we are going through WAY less feed so I'd say the rats aren't feasting like they did for a long time. It was an incidental finding by the way, we set up the trail cam because something got into what I thought was a predator-proof coop and killed three hens over three nights. That turned out to be a raccoon but we also learned about the rats.

 

[Al Gerhart]

A pretty good rule of thumb is if you are using more than a quarter pound of feed per hen per day then you are feeding more than hens. Roosters eat very little, don't even count them when figuring feed. But doing free range while trying to "train" a flock to use a good feeder much less a guillotine style feeder is going to result in hungry chickens. Those feeders have their place, I sell them along with the better treadle feeders, but you have to follow the instructions and coop the birds till at least one of them learns. A day will do it, feeder SOLIDLY secured so it doesn't move, treadle bottoming out on something solid so the bird isn't trying to balance and eat. And no feed other than what is in the feeder. Do that and they will learn. I have sold thousands of treadle feeder and slow chickens are not the problem! Slow humans or poor instructions!