what does your oyster shell and grit feeder look like?

[dappertophatter]

This is something I'd been thinking about. Using the small 5" rabbit feeders to keep it neater in the coop and pens. They have such a nasty habit of flinging stuff everywhere! How do you break them from wasting food? I thought the rabbit feeders might work.

Breaking them of wasting food is a combination of the correct height- usually at their backs- and the perfect feeder. For us, the little rabbit feeders full of regular food would get emptied in five seconds flat, so we used a Little Giant hanging #10 feeder (with a molded-in plastic grill so they can't bill out QUITE as much). It's also impossible for them to have a merry game of feeder-flipping this way.​

 

[Guinea Goonie]

The property is littered with 16 x 4 inch rubber tubs from the previous people.

We just put one of these in the barn and fill er up every once in a great while.

 

[the simple life]

Quote:
No it is not bad, they still will only pick out what they need anyway just as they would free form, I have been doing this for years and have had zero problems with my hens.

 

[chicachic]

OK. heres my problem...I had chickens years ago and recently acquired more. I was told (erroneously,apparently) that they neede oystershell just like myducks did for digestion. Now, I am learning from all of you that grit is a different product than oyster shell. I buy from agway and it seems that info is hard to get from them also,. The book I have for reference doesn't explain what either is use for...only suggests using it. I have recently purchased "Raising Chickens for dummies" and hope to learn more from this book. In the meantime, will someone explain the necessity of using each of these products? thanks I don' want to do my chickens wrong since I would like to add to them in the future.

 

[the simple life]

Oyster shell or calcium chips are for the hardening of the egg shells, grit is for digestion.
If your chickens do not have access to the outdoors then they will need grit. All chickens however need oyster shell.
edited to explain
if they have access to the outdoors they will pick up little pebbles, sand etc. and swallow those and use them to grind their food within their gizzard.
Grit is essentially the same thing, they need it to grind up their food.

 

[microbiomom]

My chicks are 10 weeks old. I have been including parakeet grit in their food. It is granite and oyster shell. I had read that you don't want to give chicks too much calcium (oyster shell). Do you think that this is suitable for them?
Thanks

 

[Tala]

Recently I took the chickens out some eggshells in one of our stainless steel camping bowls. It has a lip around the edges, whereas our ceramic-type dinnerware does not.
I set it down in the hole of the concrete block that I have their feeder on and VOILA!!!! Perfect! Should have thought of that before!

Sometimes you can get a similar style of SS dog bowl, but this just happened to be one that we already had, and we were already using a concrete block.

 

[felidaet]

Here is my Grit and Oyster Shell dispenser. There is a divider to split it into two sections. This holds about 5 lbs of grit and 5 lbs of oyster shell. I have only had to fill it a couple of times since mid August. It works great. I built it from plywood scraps from building my coop.

I also built a much larger version of this for their feed. I holds about 150 lbs of feed. I usually put 100 lbs of feed in it at a time and this lasts about 5 weeks. It makes feeding VERY easy. Here is a picture of it.

 

[daisy_dukers]

I use a low 10gal planting container for my grit, holds 80lbs...I dont know if they will ever go through all of this, but I put a mix of stage 1 fine and stage 3 adult grit into it....well not so much a mix as 1 40lb bag of each mixed up.

Oyster shells go into a 1kg coffee can, they use about 1/2 a can a month....

 

[ShaggysGirl]

I have these little stainless steel little buckets they might hold 4 cups and they are hanging by rope in the coop.