Hi everyone!
To reduce the feed costs of raising chickens, I plan to increase the proportion of alternative feeds. Therefore, I am designing a feeder specifically for kitchen scraps, garden waste, and fresh foods (not pellets/grains). Before proceeding further, I'd love honest feedback from actual chicken keepers.
The concept:
- Heavy-duty metal table
- Removable deep tray - Dual
- Wooden frame
- Punched metal sheet
View attachment 4250917
I'm trying to understand:
- How do you currently feed scraps/fresh foods? (throw on ground, bowls, other?)
- What frustrates you most about your current method? (mess, pests, waste, time, chickens making a disaster?)
- Would you pay for a dedicated scraps feeder, or is "good enough" good enough?
- If you would buy one, what's your honest price ceiling? ($20? $40? $60+?)
- What features would be make-or-break for you?
- Rodent-proof?
- Easy to clean?
- Holds X days worth of scraps?
- Weather protection?
- Something else?
- Urban/suburban vs rural? (Curious if needs differ by location)
What I'm NOT asking for: Polite encouragement
I need brutal honesty about whether this solves a real problem or if I'm solving something that doesn't need solving.
Thanks for any insights!
I like your thinking but consider the very limited market, reasons why the product isn't needed, or the technical restrictions imposed upon you with the materials and the kind of product stored in the feeder.
You did mention you weren't interested in polite encouragement......
Your metal screen bottoms rule out a lot of scrap food that is watery, would be a nightmare to clean, along with the wooden frames.
The stand would have to be customer assembled or you will pay a huge premium for shipping including a much more expensive box. Expect to pay one third of the retail cost for shipping one way or the other, distribute from your area and pay large shipping costs, pay a logistics company to store and distribute your product after paying to ship it to the West Coast, the East Coast, assuming you have a Midwest base, or you ship pallets of product to
Amazon who hits you with 35% distribution costs. What is the turnover? Can you sell a pallet per month to keep your storage costs reasonable?
Your competition is usually an old baking tin which is easily cleaned and repurposed after being too worn or grungy from kitchen use.
Your pricing range is unreasonable. Take the material price and triple it, that formula is widely used for low tech/low labor products from food to cabinetmaking, so you aren't making anything that sells for $20.00. Add in shipping losses or subsidies, friendly fraud (CC) of at least 15%, returns from the current
Amazon expectations of the population, then distribution costs or mark up the product so you can afford to lose 35% selling through
Amazon or another online sales platform.
Now, assuming your design posted with your thread, it isn't rodent proof and won't be without it being completely enclosed with a operating door and closure system. That is called a treadle feeder but people do not use treadle feeders for scraps. Why?
First treadle feeders are designed around dry stable food that can be stored for weeks and will flow without choking or jamming for the safety of the flock. Not going to happen with food waste.
Not going to be easy to clean even if you use a removable food tray.
You aren't going to be storing "x number of days of food" unless you grind up the waste and dry it. Someone tried that, you occasionally see one of their ads on Facebook, hugely expensive, and when they tried to promote the idea on BYC it was widely rejected as being of no practical value. Never saw them come back to post.
Weather protection, must be enclosed, not going to be under $60.00, and consider at the end of the year you will likely have a 5 to 10% profit margin, meaning do you really want to deal with a customer with complaints, returns, educating, all for a payout of $3.00 to $6.00 at your target selling price?
Lastly, what problem are you solving that will cause people to send you money for your product? The food cannot be left uneaten for more than a few hours, by nature is is not clean and will require frequent cleaning/disinfection, the stored product is limited unless you are using restaurant waste which itself has to be re cooked for sanitary reasons, and your competition is the customer just throwing the scraps on the ground?
Find the survey that was done last year on feeders used. Only 10% are currently using a treadle feeder meaning the vast majority of flock owners aren't interested in buying a feeder capable of protecting the feed. You are planning on selling a solution to something that really isn't a problem, has a very limited customer base, and has a set of requirements that are contradictory to the properties of the product you are storing.
One last thing to consider as a business restriction. Around 2015 the ubiquitous cheap aluminum Chinese treadle feeder hit the market. Just a box with a treadle, capacity of 12 pounds, three pounds if you didn't want to lose more feed from raking than was being eaten. I thought they would sell so I built a better one that sold for $36.00, competing with them on price but a better material with some of the design flaws fixed. Still have 80% of them. Why?
Consider a riding lawn mower. There is a floor to price that cannot be gotten past and the competition is the push mower that is four to five times less. Or consider cheap cabinets, same deal, the basic cost of materials and the labor put a floor on what can be built. Yet in both cases your target market is people with a very limited budget. That market is the most troublesome bunch of people you will ever come across. Champagne expectations on a kool aide budget. Money is dear to them and it is not wasted. In this case the buy decision is not necessity, it might be a wish for order in the coop, pointing to a clientele that is more than a bit OCD, people that are not going to be happy with a cheap product but will have high expectations meaning you will be selling for over $100.00 to have enough for modest quality materials and labor budget.
In politics the first thing you learn is to question "So what?" How does what your candidate sells have any importance? Your candidate got caught being the father of a litter of puppies. So what? Who knows, who cares, who will remember two months later at the election? Ask yourself this same question about potential products.
I like your thinking though, you are interested in filling a need for others. Not sure if this is the idea you are looking for though.
