Use weight inside tube, attach a small cable, drill hole in center of cap, run cable thru cap, attach a pulley to roof, run cable thru pulley. Tie lesser weight to empty end of cable along with a red flag. When flag is up by pulley, you know it's empty. Your design is great. 👍👍👍
I love that you teach your son! I did not like the complicated and inefficient (only feeds 1 bird at a time) feeder design though. Holds too little food and has hard-to-fill tubes. I have 25 7-week-old birds, and we just did a feeder last night. The hubs wanted to make a complicated pvc feeder (heavy sigh) and I bought a 5 gallon bucket that we cut 2-inch holes around the bottom, fastened it to a larger feeder bowl, and filled it full. The girls loved it and it was finished in about 5-minutes. I won’t need to refill it often and it can be hung if need be. Thanks for sharing though. I’m sure this works better in areas with fewer birds or bad weather.
drill 3/8" hole in top center of cap cut round plywood disk to fit down inside pipe drill 1/4" hole center of disk glue a 1/4" dowel rod into disk set plywood disk into pipe slip cap down wooden dowel rod as feed go's down so does rod to show food level
Looks like a solid design with great out-of-the-box thinking used. I will likely build it as well. The only modification I see myself doing is extending the inside 2" pipe further for a shallower well of feed so it doesn't get knocked out on the ground as much. Thankyou for this.
I saw another You Tube video where the guy used small water bottles and filled them with rocks or sand, and drilled an angled hole in the top of the cap. He then attached weed eater string to the bottle and ran it through the hole and attached a piece of wood, so that it hung down and moved up when the feed inside went down. I have made these, using mini plastic disposable water bottles, fish tank rocks, weed eater string (it slides better) and a dowel rod. I attached the dowel rod with a screw eye and I love them, they work very well, are little cost and you can always tell how much feed is inside. I already had the rocks, bottles and dowels.
You might try marking a wooden dowel and dropping it through the lid so as the feed level drops the dowel drops. You may need to put a wide "foot" or plunger on the end of the dowel if it digs in below the top of the feed. It shouldn't let much water in, but if it's not under cover, you could put a little conical party hat on it to keep the rain out. Just the first thing that came to mind...
I've seen some methods like this that use it to show how much feed is left, now that the kids are old enough I just send them out to check the feed level. ;)
Thanks for replying back. My son thought of an idea on using a buzzer switch and fish weights. If your interested you can pick up a pzo buzzer at radio shack, also we did make the 2 feeders but the hens like to dig out the feed. I may have to raise it up a tad bit to keep thier feet out.
+Janet Aldana Ours bottom feed openings are about 10-12" above the ground. You can always adjust the height of the bottom pipe or just add a coupler and add on to make it taller.
I like elements of your design. Some ways that might be possible to read the level. [_] chain depth measurer to the top of the feed level? [_] depending upon your reach paint marks horizontally at regular intervals down the inside? [_] cut a vertical grove in the pipe and clear glue a clear acrylic strip down the inside of the pipe to see the level ? [_] Would the pipe make a different resonant sound with the height (depth) of the food, as you tap the pipe (like a kid's music toy) [_] a weight transducer under a cup in the bottom wired to the outside?
Don't like it but a good attempt. Should be a trough at the bottom for me because with such a small hole 1 chicken can play, this is my feeder you can't have any. A longer trough helps prevent that - more to defend. Or a time release automatic feeder that spreads it on the ground without you in the coop. It can depend on how your chickens behave. II would want to interact with the birds and feed them myself by hand most of the time. Feeders are nice for when you can't do that. SH
Design problem.....our 4 hens emptied the tube in 24 hours onto the floor. You will need to cut 3/4's of the flat part of a test cap and place over the opening or you will have the same problem. Also, no need to glue anything. If appears to be a tight fit without.
You probably need to make your center pipe a bit longer. The difference between the bottom lip of the outer piece and the bottom edge of the inner piece determines the depth of the "well". If it's too shallow it's easy for the birds to knock all of the feed out. The only reason to glue is if used outside it makes it water tight and prevents rain from seeping between the joints and ruining the feed.
That's the reason for the overhang at the top, it keeps the feed dry. We haven't ever had a problem with feed getting wet and have used these for going on five years.
This is very good idea, we have the store bought feeders that are placed on the ground and the hens just make a mess. You said in the video that you wish you could be able to see how much feed is in the feeder and I thought about it and plexiglass came up in my mind. I found some plexiglass sheets at lowes for about $2.97 and I might cut the 4" pipe about 1" - 2" wide and about 1/2" - 2" long and glue it or put in the plexiglass in rectangulars every 1". if you don't mind me asking, about how tall did you make the tallest feeder?
+Janet Aldana I thought about plexi, plastic, and I've seen others use a weight that drops inside and lifts a cord or marker on the outside. My main concern was the solvents or glues clouding the plexi and not being good for the girls. I'm experimenting with a weight type indicator and will update the video if it work well. Our tallest feeder outside is about 5'. With three hens it would last a good 5-6 days but I think some rodents were helping out too. Raised it up off of the ground a bit more and now we can get a good week.
You could use hot glue with clear plexy I'm sure if you fit plexy from the inside out would hold well and be non toxic. I'm pretty sure hot glue is safer then PVC glue
Janet Aldana As far as the pvc glue being harmful... all public water systems that I know of have at least some pvc in them and the same glue is used on all of those joint connections. Safe enough for humans then it should be safe enough for chickens.
