Oh Joy!
Some of the chickens have mastered the grandpa feeder. A grandpa feeder is basically a box with a lid on it that you put food in. There is a step that they stand on and it opens the lid. Now under normal circumstances it should take a few weeks for chickens to learn how to use it. Not mine! It's been months - LOTS of months. I'm not even sure if they can all do it, but Bubble and Squeak and Sparrow and Abagail can. (eta. Millicent and Maude as well!) I've been spying on them for ages!
I obviously have incredibly thick chickens. It is a huge bonus that they have learned, though, as I was feeding the sparrow, mynah birds, kingfisher ( didn't mind this one!) and every other small bird within a 20 mile radius. They queued up in the morning just waiting. What was even more frustrating was that the chickens had learned, that if I didn't put the clasps on properly on the grain box they could just jump on the lid a few times and the lid would fall into the box and they could stuff their faces. They could learn this but not how to eat out of the grandpa feeder! Go figure!
I have this feeder
(this picture was taken by the man who made it)
I'm reckoning a sack of food will last twice as long now. You get aluminium feeders like this as well so I think I may get one of these for outside.
These feeders look good - I've seen them before but they are fairly expensive to send to Qld. Great concept though - and I'm so pleased that your ladies have mastered it. Nice to think that you're not feeding anything else - with 4 little legs and a tail too!
ReplyDeleteyes! How right you are! A couple of years ago I was mowing the lawn and glanced over to the chook run and saw what I thought was a wee yorkshire terrier eating from the food bowl - it wasn't a dog but a gigantic something else with 4 legs and a very long tail!!
ReplyDeleteI was trying to tell my husband we need one of these...but for just three chickens, maybe not worth it.
ReplyDeleteWe have fat boy pigeons that are very very very fat here at the moment, every day I am having to fill up the chooks feed trough...I am feeding all of Adelaides fat boy pigeon population...very frustrating.....
they are quite expensive, but now that mine seem to have mastered it I'll save a fortune on food. I almost felt sorry for all the birds today, they were just hanging around waiting!
ReplyDeleteI think that even for just 3 of them it would be a good investment.
They're a great idea. Maybe when I get chooks again I'll get one.
ReplyDeleteI too use to have all the local birds eating the chook food. However the biggest problem I had was one of my Labs, he use to jump the fence or pull it down to get into the yard. He didn't care about the chooks, just wanted their dinner.
Laura the photos of your girls are lovely.
I gotta get me one of them....the sparrow flock is crazy big!!
ReplyDeleteyou should! Honestly since mine have finally got the hang of it ( I put just corn in it for a couple of days - they LOVE corn - and it was enough to get the ball rolling) I've noticed that my feed bucket is going down at about half the speed! whoohooo
ReplyDelete