I didn’t have a lot planned for today. I did want to build another chicken feeder and a few other little things and I needed to keep prepping the van for our trip to the desert, but they were all just little things.
When I went out to have a look at the chicks, they were mostly resting. They get out first light and start foraging so by the time I get out there they’ve been at it for a few hours as I don’t get it going at that ungodly hour. :O) That has a lot to do with the fact that I go to bed around 2AM.
Keeping chicks out of the grower pen
One of the things I needed to do was patch this fence to a growing enclosure as I found two chicks had going through the large square wire. I hadn’t planned for the little peeps, just big ol chickens. So I cut a piece of chicken wire and installed it which should fix the problem.
An easier to make better chicken feeder
The chicken feeder I made yesterday wasn’t getting much action yet so I thought I’d try another model. This model is super easy to make compared to the other one. All it is a a piece of 4 inch abs as that’s what I had. I needed a little dish larger than the 4 inch pipe and three screws. I also put a coupler on the top end to make it a bit easier to fill.
Easy construction
For the dish I used a gallon paint can and cut it about two and a half inches tall with my table saw. I drilled three small holes in it for screws to fasten it to the pipe and that’s it. The pipe is set above the dish about 3 eights of an inch so feed can come down into the dish.
Next I drilled two holes near the top and put some steel wire through them to hang the unit from the pens roof.
This feeder is easy to make and works well too
This is a very simple and easy to make design as you can see. The dish is offset from the pipe to form a little feed area that is too small for them to climb into.
I did discover the white pipe is easier to see the feed level than the black pipe which is quite dark down there and may need a light to check the feed depth. The abs pipe is not necessary, but it’s what I had in stock. White PVC would be better for any of these type pipe designs mostly as the feed level can be seen easily, but otherwise it doesn’t matter what it’s made out of.
The test
I poured some feed into the top and set it up. The chicks didn’t have any trouble finding this one and started using it right away. The other unit I made yesterday is that green pipe. There is a bird on the backside using it so they are finding out about it. I’m removing the little long feeder with all the holes in it as they’ve outgrown it already.
Gluing on the van’s anti drip strip
I loaded some stuff in the van and I applied silicone to this piece of weather stripping and glued it in place. It stops water from running down the backside when it rains. That keeps it off me when I go into the doors and also helps keep water from running into the back doors.
It’s a Cream Leg Bar
I was talking with Dominique today and she showed me a chicken calendar she has and said this is our Carmelo, a chick she named. This chick was a free one with our order and was listed as a rare exotic breed and a surprise so we weren’t sure what it was. Her calendar one that looked real similar was listed as a Cream Leg Bar, so I looked it up and sure enough I think that is what it is. This is a male I think so unfortunately we are not going to get any sky-blue eggs from it as that’s what they lay. But maybe he’ll make some chickens that do. The breed has a lot of good traits and is used heavily in Europe, but not so much in the US yet.
Worms for the peeps
I hadn’t fed my peeps any worms for a few days so I dug some up. This time they wanted them real bad and would jump up about a foot and take them from my hand.
The chickens seem to like the newer feeder the best
A bit after feeding them the worms I watched them eat. The feeder I built today was being used the most. Five or six birds could feed at it at a time. The other feeder wasn’t being used nearly as much. Most of the birds by the older feeder are eating feed off the ground, but at least some birds were using it so it should also work out.
By now it was getting close to dark so I went on in for the day and that was my day.
Hi Nick,
My plan is to eat the eggs and some of the birds too. Part of my plan besides just finding something corn free to eat is to do an experiment for a couple months or so where I just eat from my garden and the chickens to see if I can really get the corn out of my body. I’ve been trying for about 15 years to do it, but I can’t quite get it all out. Most people don’t realize there is some kind of corn product in almost every thing we buy at the store. If it doesn’t bother one, it’s not a problem, but if it does, it’s a real problem because it’s almost impossible to avoid it. So at this time I’m not planning to sell anything as the birds will be too valuable to me.
Bob
I hope this finally gets the corn out of your system,good plan!I went corn free for a while then fell into easier eating . I need to get back into those better habits, too. Every little bit helps.
Comments are closed.
Header Pictures
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
Are you raising chickens to eat them and their eggs, or to sell them and what they produce?
Hi Nick,
My plan is to eat the eggs and some of the birds too. Part of my plan besides just finding something corn free to eat is to do an experiment for a couple months or so where I just eat from my garden and the chickens to see if I can really get the corn out of my body. I’ve been trying for about 15 years to do it, but I can’t quite get it all out. Most people don’t realize there is some kind of corn product in almost every thing we buy at the store. If it doesn’t bother one, it’s not a problem, but if it does, it’s a real problem because it’s almost impossible to avoid it. So at this time I’m not planning to sell anything as the birds will be too valuable to me.
Bob
I hope this finally gets the corn out of your system,good plan!I went corn free for a while then fell into easier eating . I need to get back into those better habits, too. Every little bit helps.