Building a chicken coup ...HELP?

[RustyDHart]

light hawk....Great feeder idea....Thanks

 

[Kassaundra]

Kassaundra, can you please share a photo of your home made feeder that "holds feed for a month"? I'm just shooting for a long weekend away.

I have a small coop, so I needed space saving and the ability to not have to feed everyday so here is the solution we came up with.

This is an overview of the coops, the bins on the top of the roof are the containers we store the feed in. Gary experimented w/ several different containers and likes the ones in the following pic best. They have self locking lids. They are bolted to the roof and caulked for moisture control.

Here is a close up of the contianer he settled on. The handle locks the lid in place and this container and the pvc pipe hold one 50 lb bag of feed.

This is inside the coop the pvc pipe goes from the container to the ground in the coop, it is a straight shot so nothing gets caught or hung up, and it is simple gravity fed.


I didn't realize the pics would post so small here is a link to a thread on BYC that has these same pics only full size.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=605462

This is a close up of the feeder contianer. We started w/ a foot long pvc pipe running parallel to the floor w/ the top cut out, but they were able to waste A LOT of food, since we switched to these little caps just bigger then the pipes they have all they want to eat but waste a lot less. (almost none) from reading on other feeder posts you may get even less waste if you keep the feeder station higher, like chest high on the chickens, but then if you have multiple ages that might make it more difficult for the young / small to eat.

 

[epeloquin]

If you go to BackYard Chickens I have a page there. I am very new to this forum so I can't post my pics but you can see my coop being built here...

http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=82286

 

[AlienChick]

I love the idea of the skylights in the chicken coop.

This is our second coop. (We're still working on it.)

We use a dry deep litter to keep things fresh.

It's 10x12 with a little utility closet inside to store the feed and such.

I put in an old bookcase against the wall and use it for nestboxes.

 

[April Manier]

Kassaundra, can you please share a photo of your home made feeder that "holds feed for a month"? I'm just shooting for a long weekend away.

Not sure how many chickens you have but with six full grown Barred rocks I have to fill these once a week.

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/7809_dsc00083.jpg

I also have 4 unions and four extensions I can use to make them taller to hold more feed if necessary. I am rarely gone more than a couple of days. So I have never used them.

I like this set up. I have done so much with PVC and this makes real sense. I like the kidea of extenders too!