Today, we are making a new feeder for the Chicken Tractor and fixing an old feeder for the run. So, how appropriate to write all about the evolution of our feeders. As I am sure you are wondering, How often do chickens eat? How do you feed them? What do you feed them? Believe me,there are lots of different answers to each of these questions from lots of people. But you want to know about what we do, right? First, how often do they eat? Chickens eat whenever they feel like it. They eat less in the warm temperatures and more in cold temperatures. Digestion of food acts like adding wood to your fire, it warms them right up and keeps them comfortable in cold temperatures (that and the very warm cover of feathers). They are like menopausal women during a hot flash! Since they eat whenever, we make sure feeders are full so they have access to food 24/7. How do you feed them? Um, well, shockingly, we put the feed inside the feeders. What do you feed them? We feed simple Layer Feed from the Co-Op. We keep 3 bags of feed in a 55 gallon food grade barrel inside the run so it’s easy to refill the feeders. We also feed them scratch everyday which is just cracked corn that we throw out into the run and we feed them kitchen scraps: banana peels, bell pepper insides, orange peels, cauliflower stalks, cucumber skin, etc. They love lettuce and cabbage, too, but were not very excited about kiwi and avocado skin. We have also put mushy pumpkins in and they ate that right up. During the summer we put grass clippings in there too and that is a real treat! Even the babies loved grass clippings. Oh and on a side note, we have taught them that they get these treats when we whistle for them, so they come running when we whistle! Hey, it works for the dogs, why not the chickens??? I have put pictures at the end of each of The Bad, The Good and The Better sections since my descriptions probably won’t match reality.
The Bad: We had to learn from the first feeders and go from there. Since the first brood of birds was put directly into the coop and run, we started out with what I call a “round trough feeder” for the older birds. It was a small round bottom with a plastic top that allowed the feed to stay in the bottom with dividers. Why was this the bad? Well, chickens have no manners. They like to throw their food everywhere if they can. So they would try and usually succeed at dumping a lot of the food out all over the ground. We put a funnel on top of it to try to keep it dry, but they would constantly knock that off trying to roost on it. I think we wasted lots of food and we had to refill the sucker A LOT. Sometimes we didn’t refill it until they cleaned all the food off the ground, which worked to get them to clean up the food, but did not keep them from doing it again once it was filled. We kept it raised on top of cinder blocks hoping this would keep it cleaner and make it easier for them to eat. It did not keep it clean and because there is a hole at the top too, it did nothing to keep the food dry when it rained which made it soggy, mushy and downright gross (because they kept knocking off the funnel). For the young birds that were about 2 months old or so in this brood we used the mason jar feeders as I outline in the “Good” section. So, the initial feeder was the bad for the older birds and had to be improved.
The Good: When we received the chicks, they were 3 days old. Even at that age they ate solid chick food. We bought big old bags of baby food from the Co-Op as well. We eventually mixed baby and adult food until they ran out of the mix and then put them completely on adult food. They, as all babies, did not eat as much as the older chickens. So, our very first feeders for them were understandably smaller. We started out with mason jars that screwed onto metal bottoms much like the round trough, but these were more covered with holes in it, as you will see below. We would have to fill these usually once a day. Once they grew a bit and we were filling the mason jars several times a day, we moved on to the next Good feeder which was a 3 inch pipe with 3 elbows attached to the bottom. We attached this feeder to the side of the run. This really worked well as it kept the food in the elbows and mostly off the floor, although sometimes they just threw the food on the floor anyway (by the way, chickens don’t start with manners and lose them, they just never develop them). Since their run was always inside, the upturned elbows were not subject to weather and therefore stayed dry and we only refilled this feeder twice a week or so. We did put screws in the bend of the elbows inside as a precaution after I read a horrible post about a chick that tried to go up the pipe in one of these feeders and got stuck. The screw would just prevent them from getting any more than their head in the elbow. Safety first! As I mentioned above and you can see in the picture below, we also used the mason jar feeders for the young ones in the run until they were old enough to get all adult food and figure out the feeders.
The much Better (and for our purposes the Best): The Bucket Feeder! We keep two 5 gallon bucket feeders in the run that we made from Firehouse Subs pickle buckets. They are perfect because they are a great size and allow us to only fill both of them about once a week, and they are cheap ($3 each) and they are red. I would like to say that since all of the accent colors in my house are red that I continued that decorative feature to the chicken house. Well, that would be partially correct. I continued the red accent color to the coop on the doors and nesting boxes and Chicken Tractor, but not so much regarding the feeders. Chickens are attracted to the color red. Therefore it makes it easier to get them to go to the feeders and water buckets when they are red (or so I am told). So, we ran with it. These feeders have 4 elbows in them which allows for the birds to put their heads in the bucket and eat and prevents them from throwing food out (if the elbows are cut correctly) and keeps the food dry even in the rain and snow. If you cut the elbows to much, they can manage to throw food out. The only drawback is that they have a flat top, so that means it is an open invitation for roosting and thus, poop. But it is a small price to pay to not have to constantly fill feeders. We keep them up on cinder blocks to give them a comfortable angle for the birds to reach easily. We put one of these with only two holes in the corner of the Chicken Tractor as well. All we had to do to get them to use them is to initially put a little food on the lip so they could find it and then once one chicken learned to stick her head in and eat, the rest followed.
This last photo is the comparison on how to cut and not to cut the elbows. The one on the left is the bad one…too short and allows them to throw out lots of food while the one on the right is just right. The second photo shows what the good ones look like in the bucket.
And that folks, is the evolution of our feeders!