Baby chick feeder homemade
Homemade Chick Waterer • The Prairie Homestead
When I was meandering through the aisle of the feed store the other day, I almost grabbed one of those plastic chick waterers. I knew we were going to be needing one soon, since the coop is clean and shiny and the chicks are set to arrive in a couple weeks.
But of course, my craziness innovative, frugal mentality won out, and I decided I would challenge myself to create my own chick waterer from materials I had at home.
After several conversations with my scientifically-minded husband regarding the laws of physics, I scrounged up various plastic containers and began to conduct experiments.
Let’s just say I should have payed more attention to our conversations, as I ended some with some flooded counters and sopping wet dish towels.
Anyway. I do believe I have mastered the elusive chick waterer. I am excited to share my findings with you, in hopes of saving you several physics lessons and wet kitchen floors.
First off, here is what I came up with after treasure hunting around my home:
My intial idea was to repurpose this old parmesan cheese container for the top portion. I then cut the bottom off of a plastic gallon jug to make a “dish” that is around 3 inches tall.
However, after some trial runs, I found that the parmesan container didn’t work because the lid did not seal securely enough.
So I found a 48 oz lemon juice bottle instead. I highly recommend using a bottle that has a small cap, since it’s important that the container holding the water be airtight.
I then poked a small hole, about the diameter of a pencil, near the bottom of the jug.
I used a hot glue gun to attach the bottle to the tray. I didn’t want to use any sort of glue that might leach into the water and harm the chicks.
And now you are ready to fill ‘er up. The tray should fill until the hole is covered, and then stop.
When the chicks drink, the bottle should slowly release water to provide fresh water at all times. A self-refreshing waterer is more ideal than an open pan, since it prevents the chicks from taking a bath or drowning. And we don’t want that.
Ready to make your own?
Homemade Chick Waterer Notes
- There are numerous options when it comes to raw materials. Dig through your recycling box, garbage can, or pantry to see what will work. The bottom tray needs to be several inches larger in diameter than your water container. Some ideas could include: milk jugs, yogurt tubs, gallon jugs, large plastic water bottles, etc.
- Make sure to thoroughly wash everything before assembly and don’t use any container that might have had substances that would be toxic to the chicks.
- The container that you choose to hold the water must have a lid and be air tight.
- Be mindful of where you place the hole.
If it is too high, the tray will overflow. If it is too low, the water level might be unreachable for the chicks.
- If the water does not want to flow, try increasing the size of your hole.
Of course, these same principles could be applied to a larger scale to make a full-sized chicken waterer. If Prairie Baby was older, this would have made a great science experiment. But as of right now, she is more interested in trying to chew on the containers. Oh well, maybe eventually. 😉
Have you ever made a homemade chicken waterer? What materials did you use?
How to make a DIY chicken and quail feeder for 0 dollars – Road Less Unraveled
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DIY feeders for your brooder that cost nothing
If you’ve already read my previous posts on chicken rearing, you can probably guess that I’m a fan of diy’ing over buying when possible.
This applies to chicken feeders too. I hate most feeder designs because they’re yet more scraps of plastic polluting the planet. They also suck at what they’re supposed to do!
No matter what, your chickens will find a way to spill their food all over the floor. Your chickens will also inevitably find a way to drop a deuce or two in their food. These things will happen no matter what.
So if these things will happen no matter what, why are you wasting money on buying useless feeders?
Sometimes the best solutions are the ones we create ourselves using free stuff we have around the house.
Best baby chick feeder (0-1 weeks old)
My new favorite feeder for new baby chicks consists of a row of paper egg cartons. Elevate the feeder up to the height of your chicks’ heads so they can’t poop in their food or kick the food all over the place. I secure the egg cartons to the sides of my brooder walls with twist ties.
As the babies get older, they’ll start getting naughty.
They’ll climb into the cups of the feeder. Very cute!
They’ll also be just tall enough to poop inside the feeders. Not so cute!
This is when you rip out the egg cartons and throw them in your compost pile.
Zero waste homestead!
The paper egg cartons are big enough to hold food for chicks up to one week old. At this stage you should only have to refill the feeder about 2-3 times a day.
Once they get bigger, you’ll want to upgrade to diy hanging feeders…
Keep reading!
Paper egg carton feeders for new chicks. Compost the cardboard when the chicks outgrow them.Best diy hanging chicken feeder (1 week+ to adulthood)
For bigger chicks and even adult chickens, hanging feeders are the best way to keep their food clean of poop and to keep them from flicking their food all over the place.
I use regular 1L pop bottles for my older chicks. If you have more chicks, or full grown chickens, you’ll want to use larger soda bottles to store more feed.
Simply cut 3 openings about 2″-3″ up from the bottom of the bottle. The openings should be wide and tall enough for your chickens to stick their heads in without scratching their combs or wattles. You don’t want the openings any bigger because multiple chickens will try to stick their heads in the same hole and end up pecking each other.
Some people elevate their feeders by stacking bricks underneath, but this just gives naughty chickens a step up when they want to topple their feeder.
I like to hang my feeders. Again, you’ll want to hang the bottles so the opening is just at their head height when they’re standing upright (maybe 1″ higher, depending on the age of your chickens). This keeps them from gripping the opening with their legs. It’s also just high enough that they can’t stick their butt holes in the openings…
Try it out and watch them eat. If it’s too high for them to reach the last bits of food in the bottom of the bottle, you’ll want to lower the feeder a bit.
As your chickens grow, you can adjust the height of the bottles along with their growth.
Hanging 1L bottle feeders. No mess. No wasted food. No poop. These babies are not happy that I’m sneaking a photo during their lunchtime. Look at those angry faces!Sometimes the best and most frugal solutions to common problems are found in items we all have lying around the house. Let me know if you have any other nifty ways to reuse household items for your chooks!
Robin
On the path to figuring out how to survive in a system that wants to chew me up and spit me out. From autism, to finding ways to make a living without a job, to frugality, to retiring early, to homesteading. Finding a road that’s less unraveled. That’s pretty much what this site is all about.
Do-it-yourself feeder for chickens from improvised materials: photo and video
01/28/2022 18 788 2 0 Chicken coops, cages and feeders
so that it is comfortable for the birds.
There are ready-made products that can be purchased in stores, but it is much more pleasant to make a feeder yourself. How to do it? What materials will be needed? All this and much more in our article. nine0006
Content:
- 1
Medical from improvised materials
- 2
Plastic bottle
- 2.1
Tools and materials
- 2.2
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- 2.1
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- 3.1
Tools and materials
- 3.2
Step-by-step instructions
- 3.1
- 4
Photo gallery
- 5
Video “Chicken feeders”
Feeder made from local materials
Feeders for chickens have different modifications. They depend on the types of feed supply, and the position of the structure itself in the cage. For example, they are divided by size, how they are attached, or how you will serve food.
Here is their classification:
- floor;
- wall-mounted;
- suspended;
- tray.
Making a product with your own hands is very simple.
General rules for creation:
- Little chickens must not be able to climb into the food bowl, otherwise they will leave their droppings there and will not eat food.
- The design itself should be comfortable in everyday use.
- The volume of the structure should be enough for all the chickens and preferably for the whole day, and most importantly, the size should be such that there is enough space for everyone to eat.
There are many types of homemade feeders from scrap materials, here are a few:
- Feeder based on a plastic sewer pipe. It can be left lying around for example after repair, or you can buy it at any store. And the assembly process is very simple and within the power of any craftsman. To do this, you will need a pipe with a sufficient diameter, a plastic pipe tee, a cap to fit the pipe and a file to cut it all.
- You can also make a feeder using a small bucket left over from ice cream, for example.
- They are also of the bunker type, to create them you need a bucket of construction mixtures, not metal, for example, a sectional dog bowl, and most importantly, a very sharp knife.
- Ordinary canteen, made very simply, a hole is cut in a simple, for example, 5 liter plastic canister.
- For the more experienced, there is a plywood fixture, its production will take you more time and effort, but the reliability of this design will serve you for more than one year.
- With plastic, we can make many different feeders.
Next, we will tell you how to make a feeder from a plastic bottle.
Plastic bottle feeder
DIY bottle feeder for chicks is an easy solution for beginner poultry farmers. This method is the most popular and easily accessible, you can do it too, and now we will tell you how easy it is.
Tools and materials
To get started on creating a design based on a plastic bottle, we need things that are at hand in every home:
- An eggplant with a capacity of 2 to 10 liters, at your discretion.
- Metal bowl, preferably a large basin.
- We also need a plastic funnel.
- And the most important thing is a hammer and up to 20 nails.
- We will also need a very sharp knife, which we mentioned earlier. nine0017
Step-by-step instructions
- On the bottom of your chosen bottle, cut a few holes. It is with the help of them that the food will get enough sleep for our chicks.
- Next, take the nails and heat them up, then insert them on the bottom of the bottle at the same level with the basin in order to delimit the approach of the chickens to the dish. The main thing is that the gap between the nails should be exactly for one bird.
- We attach a funnel-shaped dish to the neck, with the help of which the food will evenly fill the bottle.
All this is shown in the photo below. nine0017
That's it, this feeder should be enough for 20-25 chickens, it remains only to place it in a cage with livestock.
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Automatic chicken feeder
It is very important to provide chickens with good nutrition from the very beginning and the main thing is that it be on a constant basis, that is, at any time of the day, an automatic feeder will help us with this.
Tools and materials
We need:
- sharp knife;
- 1.5 or 2 liter bottle;
- food bowl, one and a half times the width of the selected bottle;
- screw.
Step by step instructions
- Cut off the bottom of the bottle.
- Cut off the neck about 7 cm from the edge.
- Cut out holes so that the feed can flow evenly.
- Punch the cap with a screw.
- We connect them as shown in the photo.
Everything can be filled with food and put on your chicks.
Feed should be enough for the day and you do not need to check every five minutes for its availability. nine0006
Here we have told you one of the intricacies of poultry farming. In the video below, we have selected several more types of feeders to create at home, which will certainly interest you.
Photo gallery
- photo 1. Chickens eat food
- photo 2. Feeding for feeding chickens
- photo 3. Chicken and plastic feeder
- photo 4 nine0185
- Photo 5. Chickens in a cage eating food
- Photo 6. Dimensions of a homemade structure for chickens
Video "Chicken feeders"
This video describes the creation of several types of feeders from plastic containers.
Do-it-yourself chicken feeder
If you decide to have chickens, ordinary or decorative, then the work will increase noticeably.
To make it a little easier to care for chickens, you should take care of the feeder in advance. In specialized stores you will find a great variety of them. But the principle of operation for all drinkers and bird feeders is approximately the same. So it’s quite possible to make homemade chicken feeders at home from improvised materials. nine0006
How to make a small chicken feeder?
You will need a plastic bucket and plate. They can be purchased in the disposable tableware section. This method is suitable for chicks that you have just acquired.
- Using wire cutters, make cuts along the entire edge of the bucket.
- Cuts should be twice as large as shown in the photo. First we make small ones, and then we increase them.
- Pour compound feed into the bucket. nine0017
- Cover with a plate and turn over.
- As it is consumed, the food will be poured onto the plate.
Here is a similar way to make a chicken feeder. It is designed for slightly older individuals.
- To make such a feeder, you will need a sectional dog bowl, a plastic bucket.
- We make holes in a simple plastic bucket. Their number corresponds to the number of sections in the bowl. nine0017
- Place the bucket on the bowl so that the holes are exactly above each section.
- Now we fix the structure with screws and nuts.
- We fill the food inside and install it in the chicken coop.
Feeders for broilers
If you decide to have broilers, you will have to pay special attention to feeding. This type of poultry needs constant access to food. It is clear that things accumulate during the day and it is quite difficult to constantly add food to the bird. The problem will be solved by a large do-it-yourself chicken feeder.
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- To make a feeder, you need to take two plastic buckets, two containers from the cooler, a piece of plastic pipe.
- Buckets need to be cut with holes. Their dimensions should allow the poultry to reach the food, but not completely penetrate the container. We cut out a template from cardboard and apply it to the walls of the bucket. Then trace and cut with a jigsaw.
- A piece of pipe will be needed to make a restrictor, it will not allow the neck of the container to sink completely to the bottom of the bucket and will control the flow of feed. nine0017
- Using a jigsaw, cut a pipe about 15 cm long. Next, at a distance of 3 cm from the edge, we make three holes with a drill. From these holes with a jigsaw, we cut the segments at an angle to the base along the long side.
- Fill containers with feed or water. Set to limiter. Then we cover it all with a bucket and turn it over.
- The handles on the bucket make it easy to carry.
Large makeshift chick feeders
For a large number of poultry, another version of the feeder can be made. For manufacturing, you will need a small plastic basin or bowl, a container for food (this can be a plastic canister or a water tank).
- Cut off the top of the bowl. We leave a side of such a height that the chickens can get it.
- Cut off the bottom of the eggplant.
- Legs for construction can be made from leftover bowls or any other similar material. nine0017
- The author of the lesson suggests using a drywall mount. We cut the workpiece into pieces.
- There should be three "legs".
- Bolted to the support tank. From below we bend them a little to ensure the stability of the structure.
- This is what the structure looks like.
- Do-it-yourself chicken feeder is ready!
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