Posts Tagged how to teach hens to use feeder

Box containing Grandpas Feeder” has arrived.

Ever since we built the coop and outdoor run 10 years ago, we’ve had trouble with rats and wild birds eating the chicken food. While the feeder is in the covered area of the run, it has been accessible to critters who can burrow and fly into the area. To keep wild birds from eating the food during the day, we used hardware wire to cover the standard chicken wire. That worked for the wild birds. But the rats and mice that make little tunnels into the coop continued to steal chicken feed during the night.

To mitigate the loss of feed, we put the feeder into a covered trash can in the evening and take it out in the morning. While the husband is willing to go out at night to do this, I am not. When he was recently gone on a trip for a few nights, I saw how inconvenient this chore was. I splurged and ordered one of  “GRANDPAS FEEDERS“.

The galvanized “Grandpas feeder” metal feeder has a metal plate on which the hens must stand to open the lid. The hens have to learn how to get at their food. The layer pellets are enclosed until they step on the metal plate

properly. Now, let it be known that these three hens are quite bright and I have no doubt they will learn within a week or two, how to work this feeding machine.

Putting together Grandpas Feeder is easy. It takes about 30 minutes.

• Week One: the feeder is kept open.
• Week Two: the feeder is kept partially open.
• Week Three: the feeder is closed and hens must stand on a metal plate to open it and to avail themselves to the pellets.

Take a look at the new “Grandpas Feeder” on the “Live Webcam” and see how the hens are doing. This experiment will be interesting and I hope it reduces the loss of food to the tiny nocturnal creatures that visit at night.

UPDATE 8-2020

Our new pullets have had no problem adjusting to the Grandpa’s Feeder. It makes a loud noise when they step off the platform but this does not seem to bother them. We put a piece of weatherstripping on the flap that shuts down so that we would not have to listen to the sound all day.