Easy Day Working On Improving the Chickens Rat Proof Feeders

Saturday August 24, 2019 Guerneville CA.

An easier day

Today I was taking a day off from the hard trail work I was doing on my new spring project to give my body a chance to catch up.

So I worked on chicken stuff all day taking it easy of course.

Eggs for all the peeps

I tested the eggs on the chicks. This morning I made sure they ate well of seeds before I gave them half the scrambled eggs I made for them. This worked as they didn’t even finish the first half of the eggs. After they left to sit and digest I put the other half of the eggs in the dish and they lasted all day so maybe the littlest chicks got some. At least I gave them the chance to get some.

Here’s the little guys eating the first half of he scrambled eggs.

Improving the feeders

The next thing I needed to do was put a pulley and weighted can on the chick feeder so it’s opens when they trigger the trigger and I needed to  make a better trigger that the little chicks could open as they are fairly light.

I got the pulley and can installed and noted the can was getting hit by the door when it opened. I need another pulley to fix that so that will take a trip to the store soon. It works ok for now though.

New door trigger for the light chicks

The next thing I did was design this door trigger so the chicks could open the door when they get up in the morning and get something to eat. With the chicks being much lighter than the bigger birds I needed a new design and came up with this contraption that seems to work pretty well. I used a hinge and the piece of wire on the left is a pin that pulls out of the block of wood on the left side. The chick steps on the little bar on the right and the pin pulls out and the door opens and the chick better watch out when the door opens. :O) So far I tested it out and it seems to be working ok but may need some tinkering to improve it.

Here’s a top view of the trigger mechanism. The rope goes to the pulley and  the weighted can to open it when the trigger is triggered.

Rat proof feeder for the main pen

I needed one of these rat proof feeders in the main chicken pen for the larger chickens. I’d build the bottom box but I needed to build the lid and install hinges and a trigger on this one with the weighted can too.

Here’s the finished product with the lid in the open position.

An improvement needed

This one has the same problem as the other feeder. The can hits the door or the door hits the can when it opens which needs improved as eventually something will get broken.

To improve the can hitting the door I needed to make some braces to hold up more pulleys so I welded up a couple pieces of rebar and installed them for the pulleys.

Here’s the braces I made for the pulleys.

Improved one feeder

I had one extra pulley so I fixed up the main pen pulleys and it works much better.

Broody hen

This hen has been trying to be a momma for some time now and I’ve been taking her eggs away. I tried to add some eggs to her clutch but she abandoned them so we are starting over and I’m trying to  let her do her thing without me interfering. So far she has 6 eggs. Other hens come into her nest and leave their eggs until she gets how many she wants.

And Sweet Pea jumped up on my lap to check me out.

Let the chickens test things out

Messing with that stuff took me all day as I just kept puttering away until the job was done. Like everything I’ll just have to let the chickens test out the new triggers on the new rat proof feeders to see how and if they work out.

Nice day puttering in the chicken pens.