Utah!

[bitsyhorse]

we have our first baby!!!!!!

 

[gus2pp]

Congratulations!!! Pretty coloring. What breed?

 

[sideWing]

we have our first baby!!!!!!

Congrats! It's amazing isn't it?

 

[La Casa de Pollo]

Now if only I had snails :/ lol! I think my chickens obliterated them when I moved out here a year ago. They will even fight over the empty shells if they find them. I have a friend in West Valley who is having a bad snail problem and I wish I could lend her my ducks. They'd probably have a hey day!

Lisa, wish I was closer to you! Between my turkeys and my chickens, I've been getting a lot of eggs (five a day is a lot to me) I've been trying to incorporate eggs into more of our meals to lighten the load.

I can save some for you when I meet up to get the chickie. I am hoping next week to get down there, soccer will be over, school will be out, and the holiday weekend done, things should be tons less crazy now. How many do you want?

Bitsy Congrats!! Cute little baby! Do I see an EE there?

 

[sideWing]

These brooder feeders are a huge waste of money. Over the course of a month my chicks must have shoveled 15 pounds of food out of it with their beaks. Some birds are worse than others, but the food was in piles all over the brooder floor. The chicks bill it out and then kick it all over the floor and into the pine shavings.





I came up with a new design for a feeder. It's simple, but it's saving me a lot of money in feed. It's a box with higher sides and a ramp in and out of the box. The chicks can scrape all they want and the food stays in the box and the pine shavings stay (mostly) out. Since I had a bigger area for the food I attached a 4 inch PVC pipe to the wall of the little brooder about an inch and a half off of the floor so that the food slowly dispenses as they eat it. You might be thinking to yourself "self, the chicks are going to poop in there". They do a little, but it's a lot less than when they kick the food all over the brooder and poop all over it all the time.



I could come up with a commercial design if anyone knows of a good manufacturing company we could work with.

 

[Neuport]

sidewing - good idea, looks like it is working well. I also hated the waste from the standard feeders/waters. I recently posted my solution to the same problem here.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/chick-food-and-water-hangar




I found that by hanging the feeder and waterer the problems went away. The problem is they don't provide a hangar so I made one that slips on the bottle and raise it as they grow. I now use nipple waterers, even in the brooder but the hanging feeder for the brooder is great. I use bucket feeders with plumbing elbows in the coop and run. And this nipple waterer in the run.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/another-bucket-fed-nipple-waterer

 

[sideWing]

sidewing - good idea, looks like it is working well. I also hated the waste from the standard feeders/waters. I recently posted my solution to the same problem here.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/chick-food-and-water-hangar




I found that by hanging the feeder and waterer the problems went away. The problem is they don't provide a hangar so I made one that slips on the bottle and raise it as they grow. I now use nipple waterers, even in the brooder but the hanging feeder for the brooder is great. I use bucket feeders with plumbing elbows in the coop and run. And this nipple waterer in the run.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/another-bucket-fed-nipple-waterer

I elevated the feeder and it did not work with my birds. I have had sexlinks, wyandotte, and Marans and they still kicked it all out. Wyandotte are the worst I think. Maybe I didn't have it hight enough? I had some smaller chicks so I couldn't put it too high.

 

[La Casa de Pollo]

My Leghorns or Leghorn/Am mixes are terrible when they are chicks, eat like little pigs. Cynthia had one named Miss Piggy lol.

Love all the ideas!

 

[Neuport]

I didn't have much luck when I tried putting them up on blocks of wood. I think it works best when they have to reach slightly to put their beak in. For me the waste stopped when I hung them. I agree it would not work as well if the birds vary a lot in size.

 

[newmarch2014]

I like it sideWing, I put mine in a disposable pie pan and elevated it and it helped a lot. they still do it a bit from the pie pan overflow but not as much. A better mousetrap is always good. Also now that mine are older I switched to crumbles, that cut down on a lot of the problem as well.