Fred and I are pretty proud of ourselves. We’ve been using a cheap, plastic chicken feeder in our chicken coop since we put the chickens outside last spring. We just weren’t managing to find something that was small enough to fit in the confined space of the chicken run yet large enough to feed five chickens every day.
More than a week ago, the chickens managed to break the plastic feeder. Fred repaired it with a 2-liter bottle, but he knew the repair wouldn’t last long. Knowing that we’d need to do something else, he got to thinking. He came up with an idea that used PVC pipe and hardware. While it was clever, it seemed expensive, and it seemed like the hard way of doing things.
So the two of us started talking, and in the end, we came up with a really durable chicken feeder that holds more food than the old one yet it isn’t too big for the chickens’ limited space.
We bought a 9″ cake pan and used that as the feed pan. We used a food-grade funnel that we had in our cabinet to direct food toward the outside of the “tube”, and we used an empty #10 can as the tube. We added some hardware from the hardware store along with an old metal pants hanger from which to hang the feeder, and in the end, we have a really great feeder!
We should have documented the assembly process with some additional photos, but honestly, it didn’t occur to us. When we were done though, we both thought it’d make a decent post for the blog. When you don’t have what you need and you can make it from stuff that’s just lying around, it’s a good day! And for us, it was some money saved as well.
I am surprised the word “duct tape” did not end up somewhere your post :)
I think the creative and resourcesful people will do better with the future that is coming our way.
Keep up the Great work!
Maybe I can wrap the hanger in metal duct tape to make it look shiny? :)