Large wall mount chicken feeder

I made a large no waste chicken feeder for my daughters coop and it works well. The plastic tote is the only thing that bothers me. It was brittle when I made it and it is probably going to get worse over the winter. The chickens will roost on it and jump from it to the roosts. I am sure it is going to get cracked and broken. So, I started looking around for other designs. Then I tripped over jthornton’s design on backyard chickens. I knew this would probably be the best for me.

So I went to Lowes and bought a $20 sheet of plywood brought it home and figured on volumes to size how big I wanted it. My daughters tote is 22×13 x9 and is 2574 square inches. I went with a design of 23″ (inside dimension) x 6″ x 20″ and that is 2760 square inches. I’ll lose about 414 square inches to the top slope. The design is to keep chickens from stilling/roosting on top and pooping in the feed. JT did a long roof door that covered the feed tray. I am not doing this as mine is under my poop boards so they can’t be on it or poop on it.

You can get most of the details off of JT’s post on BackYardChickens and see more of it. The 45° bottom slides the food from the storage container into the food tray. I did not show any details, but the backplane is 24″ wide x 20″ tall. The side boards are 20″ on the vertical side, 6″ wide and cut on 45 degrees. The slide bottom board is about 9″ wide to fit that spot with 45 degree angles on the back and front. The strap is to hold the feed tray bottom in place while the glue sets. I couldn’t get the finish nailer on a 45° back to get nails in it.

Above shows the side of the feed box and the pieces that hold the feed tray to the box.The front is screwed on incase I ever want to open it up for adjustments or alterations. The clamps are holding the feed tray lip on. I gapped the front board up 1 3/4″ (mistake, see the edit below) from the bottom and the feed tray lip is 2 1/2″ tall. So far the chickens are not wasting any feed.

JT’s design used Lexan across the entire front. His was skinnier and taller. I had a short and wide space to use and didn’t want to use lexan or plexiglass over that large of an area. I still wanted to be able to see how much feed was in it. Plexiglass can get very brittle and lexan is much stronger. I bought one small piece of lexan and cut it in half so I can make two feeders.

I marked two spots for the top and bottom hole and drilled them with a 2″ Forstners bit and drilled them out. Drew line between the outsides and cut up them with a jigsaw. The drilled holes in the lexan and screwed it down. Don’t try and force screws through plastic and drill larger pilot holes first.

Here is is with the top installed and in the chicken coop. It holds over 2 – 5 gallon buckets of feed. Seventeen 11 week old chickens haven’t come close to draining it to 3/4 full in a week.

This is the feed windows showing me it is still 3/4 full after about 4 days. I also rasped the bottom hole for the window to slope 45° so food wouldn’t stack there giving the illusion of being partially full when almost empty.

Enjoy!

EDIT

So, JT’s original design called for a 1″ opening. I made mine 1 3/4″ and with a 2 1/2″ sides for the tray, it appeared fine. No it was not! The chickens got in there digging and pushing looking for the best pieces or something. They started overflowing it on the floor with the crumbles.

So as shown here, I unscrewed the front as I did not nail and glue in uncase it needed cleaning or work, thank God. I lowered it and took the top door off. The marked it and cut 3/4″ off the sides and back. Added the top door back on. Then I cut 5 dividers to keep them from pushing the food back and forth. Now very little feed comes out and barely covers the bottom. No food is getting wasted now.

A closer look with the pellets in it and remounted.

Rumble video added