Friday, July 23, 2010

making a new chicken feeder

Not much going on around the farm these days except the unbearable heat.  In a few weeks I may try to get some goats, but for now it's just us and the chickens.  They should be getting ready to start laying, but lately they have been knocking over their food or standing on the feeder.  Luci had a great idea for some new feeders and despite the heat I managed to hang around outside long enough to get these made. 
I took some 4" PVC that Luci had picked up at the hardware store and cut out one quarter down the length of the pipe.  A couple screws hold the caps on each end and now the chickens have a new feeder that should keep out the rain. 

The chickens are much happier now that the feeder is long enough for them to all get to it at the same time.  We just noticed a few days ago that we had a rooster in one bunch of hens.  Still deciding what to do about this guy.   We don't want fertilized eggs, but it is tempting to just let things go and see if they make some chicks on their own.

2 comments:

  1. Great idea. How much space and what kind of home do they need? I want chickens, but need to study up on appropriate dwellings.

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  2. You don't really need a ton of space especially if you feed them pellets. If you had an suburban back yard I would think you could probably have four or five without it being to big a mess. You could cram fifty in a small yard and they would be ok, but it would be one big ol' mess pretty quick.any kind of small building will work to shut them in at night. Of course it needs to be bigger if you leave them in during the day. Ours always are in coops with no floor because we move it every day even when we let them out to run around. the poop fertilizes the yard. If you have a dwelling with a floor it is just a good idea to keep the floor covered with grass or hay or something and clean it out regularly.

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