The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Low budget chicken treadle feeder?

trying to make a low budget treadle feeder from available supplies

We're still having a problem with rats stealing our chicken feed.

You can find free plans for a treadle feeder on the internet that involve cutting out pieces of plywood, but I wanted to see if I could build a smaller, low budget version from basic lumber supplies like 2x6's and furring strips.

The next step is to build a platform for the chickens to step onto that will be hooked to some linkage that lifts the cover off the food with the help of the weight of the chicken. When they step off the cover goes back down.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Definitely keep us updated on this one! I don't like using plywood if I don't have to.
Comment by Caroline Tue Feb 25 09:13:53 2014

I'm interested to see where this one goes - we have a lot of trouble with rats getting into the feed at night, and wild birds getting into it during the day.

Commercial treadle feeders are extremely expensive!

Comment by Darren (Green Change) Wed Feb 26 16:54:16 2014





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