My previous post explains how we were going on vacation for a few weeks and I wanted to make sure our neighbors didn't have to stress too much about helping with the chickens. I wanted them to mostly gather eggs and check their food level for us.
There were many chicken feeders online and I took a few tips and built my own.
Below are the ONLY supplies you need (along with a way to cut PVC and screw straps onto wall):
-3" PVC cap
I'll start off by saying it's important to have your feeder high enough for the chickens to reach their heads in but not be able to push food out with their beaks.
That being said you may be wondering what the 3 smaller sections of PVC pipe are in the picture. They're important because they allow me to change the height of my feeder very easily for when I have pullets again (I'll call them spacers)... remember you want your feeder high enough that the chickens can't push food onto the floor (because they will and it's very wasteful)!
What's great about this system is I didn't glue ANYTHING. My feeder is inside my coop so I don't need to worry about water getting into my joints. I like that I can change things down the road if I ever need to. I put my knockout cap in from the bottom...
...then put my tallest PVC spacer in after that. The spacer also holds the cap in place.
The spacer sits on the edge of my coop and pressure keeps everything together.
I used strapping to tie the bottom and top securely. The top cap lid comes off easily for re-filling.
I fill this white bin up completely to the top and it will fill the entire pipe with food. It lasts about 3-4 days (for 7 chickens) even when we substitute with a large amount of scraps from the kitchen. I heard chickens are pigs and I believe it! When we didn't have this feeding system we would go through about half the amount of food we are now (I think we'll resort to using this feeder only when we're on vacation or camping for a few days).
The pipe is tall enough that I can't see inside (or rather I don't want to try and get spider webs in my hair). I made a larger scoop from a 1-gallon milk jug and it works wonderful - it bends so the sides are closer together and I get less spilling.
(This girl wasn't happy with all the drilling noise I was making - sorry little lady!)
See the food on the ground?... That was before I put the tallest spacer on.
Labels: chickens, DIY, tutorial
