flock

Chicken Feeder and Precrastination

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ Leave a comment

In some of my previous posts (Chicken Coop Automation 1 and Chicken Coop Automation Part 2 ), I mentioned preemptive laziness and how it relates to my chicken habit. After reading those posts, my wife coined a new word: precrastination. I liked the term, and I defined it to mean doing a task ahead of time to allow more free time in the future. It turns out precrastination is a real psychological term, and its real definition is performing a task before it is beneficial or optimal to do so. I just can’t win. I guess I need to procrastinate my precrastination to reach an optimal state of crastination.

Regardless, I think I crastinated this chicken feeder just right. The idea actually came from the internet of googles, but it works very well so I thought I’d pass it on.

Originally I had a traditional chicken feeder that fed the ground better than it fed the chickens. I would fill it up with a couple pounds of feed, and most of it would end up on the ground the next day. This didn’t align with my laissez faire chicken policy.

Some research provided some exotic and elaborate feeding systems that had been created: from electronic rationing systems to screw drive feeders with an auger. While I am a firm believer in over engineering and Rube Goldberg devices, I didn’t want to deal with the calibration, sensors, programming, and expense for this particular project. I did some more research and discovered that I could make a very simple feeder with some advanced engineering materials: hot glue, a bucket, and some PVC… pretty much all of the good stuff minus duct tape and zip ties.

The feeder is pretty basic and shouldn’t require much explanation.

  • Get bucket.
  • Get PVC elbow
  • Get hot glue gun
  • Cut hole in bucket
  • Trim one end of PVC elbow
  • Hot glue PVC elbow in hole

Right now, I have one of these made from a square bucket and two made from round buckets. Rather than putting feed in a couple pounds at a time and having it trampled into the ground, I fill up all three about once a month with 50# of pellet feed and have virtually no waste.

The only variable I’ve played with is the height of the internal mouth of the PVC above the floor of the bucket:

  • 1/2″: too low, and the feed does not feed very well
  • 1″: the feed feeds fairly freely
  • 1 1/2″: (.125 feet) feed feeds forth flawlessly forming a fully functional first-rate fowl feeder

I would also like to note the importance of using feed pellets rather than crumbles. Crumbles muck up the whole works.

The neat thing about this project is that more time is spent driving to the store and buying the components than actually building the feeder!

Tuna of the Yard: A Chicken Update

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 2 Comments

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted as I’ve had some career changes and gotten married. Things are getting caught up, so I wanted to post some anxiously awaited updates. I will start with chickens.

I read that once a chicken habit started, it was hard to keep control of the addiction. My initial plan was to “try” only one chicken, but that immediately segued into three:

  • 1 Chicken would be lonely
  • 2 Chickens minimum would be required (one to keep the 1st chicken company)
  • 3 Chickens would be ideal  (an extra chicken as a backup)

My thought process was that 3 chickens would yield about 2 eggs per day, and a “flock” of 3 chickens shouldn’t be too hard to maintain. What I didn’t include in my thought process was:

  • The stupidity of chickens
  • Chickens should be isolated before being introduced to a flock
  • A new isolated chicken by itself would be lonely (hence a need to buy two at a time)

One of my first 3 chickens had to be dispatched due to stupidity (I think she ate several feet of twine), so I needed a new backup chicken. Since I needed to buy new chickens in pairs and keep them isolated.KIMG0004 it lead me to build a new coop (on which I will post more details later).

Now I had a secondary coop. I bought 2 new chickens, got them acclimated with the old chickens, and things were going well with 4 hens… for a while. I eventually realized that I had extra capacity that was not being utilized, mentioned it to a friend, and we agreed that I would take 2 of his chickens. He brought 4.

Things get kind of squirrelly after that. One of the hens turned out to be a rooster and was given away, a friend gave us a couple “prettier” hens, another hen died of stupidity, a hen was potentially hawked, one decided to provide her services elsewhere, we acquired some chickens wandered to our flock from a neighbor…

Chicken Summary to date:

  • The flock peaked at 9 chickens
  • It currently consists of 6 hens and 1 rooster
  • We’ve acquired a total of 14 chickens
  • 7 chickens have left the flock

Summary of lost chickens:

  • Stupidity – potentially ate a bunch of twine, pendulous crop
  • Stupidity – went through cat door, couldn’t find way back out of shop
  • Maleness – turned out to be a rooster and was given away
  • Possum – potentially attacked by a possum
  • Hawk – was found injured in the middle of the day, there was a hawk lurking about
  • Sickness – the hen was never quite right and was attacked by the other hens
  • Stupidity– naively set out to make it on her own somewhere else

I KIMG0207have included an example of chicken stupidity just to prove my point. It was one of the coldest days of the year, so I heated their coops and provided in-coop food and water. This bird brain decided she’d rather spend the afternoon standing in cold water. It should also be noted that 3 of the chickens opt to stay in a tree during subfreezing temperatures rather than their heated coop.

Lessons Learnt:

  • It is impossible to have just one chicken
  • Like gasses, chicken populations grow to match their contained volume
  • Chickens are stupid
  • Eggs taste great

 

I Might Be an Alien

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 3 Comments

KIMG0054That title might seem confusing… especially since it relates to chickens.

I didn’t buy my pullets as chicks. I bought them as adolescents, so they spent their childhood years (months) solely with other chickens and had minimal human contact. This makes them uncomfortable around humans, at least during the day. That led me to a loophole. When they roost at night, they are trapped in the coop. My idea has been to pet them at night when they were confined, docile, and hypnotized with sleep. I figured this would make them comfortable with human handling.

Then, I started thinking about it from their perspective. Late each night, I:

  • Silently approach their chicken tractor
  • Turn on a bright flashlight
  • Remove their roof
  • Proceed to probe at them
  • Sometimes there is a cat involved, other times there isn’t
  • Replace everything, like nothing ever happened
  • Sneak away

That creepy scenario didn’t even include the magic automated chicken door that locks them in at night and lets them out in the morning.

Except for the cat part (I’ve never seen an episode like that), Doesn’t that sound like being on the wrong side of an X-Files episode? From their point of view, I think it might freak them out more then tame them. I just wish I could understand their conversation and what they have been saying around the water bowl. I hope I haven’t traumatized them so badly that we can’t share a laugh about it several years (months) down the road when they are mature adults and have lost their adolescent angst.

Moving forward, I am going to give up on the late night visitation approach for winning their friendship. I am just going to bribe them with meal worms. I bought some today, and those things are like crack for chickens.