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Chickens eat a LOT of food.
They waste even more.
Especially when this is what you use to feed them.
Yeah… not the most efficient way to do it. So off I went to my local farm store to buy a chicken feeder. I wanted one of the big galvanized ones that hold a bunch of feed. So I found one and, like most things at this particular store, it wasn’t price marked. Up I went to the cash register to find out how much it was going to cost. Three minutes later, I was putting it back on the shelf. $40! To feed my chickens!
Ok, plan B. I’ll build a pvc chicken feeder. Then I priced out the pipe for that. At nearly $20 a stick of pipe, it was still too rich for my taste. So there I am, wandering around my local home supply store, trying to come up with a solution.
Then I see them, bright orange 5 gallon buckets. The wheels started spinning and, with two pvc elbows in hand, I was out the door for $6. (I already had the bucket!)
Admittedly, it wasn’t the prettiest bucket. Next I enlisted my oh so patient with my many crazy ideas husband to help and we traced the elbows onto the bucket.
Then we cut out the holes with a razor blade. You’ll notice that there is a bigger end and a smaller end on the elbows. You want to trace around the smaller end.
You could probably put up to four elbows on one bucket, but we decided that two was plenty. We can always add more in the future if we need to.
Next we put the elbows into the holes to check the fit. We decided that the elbows were a bit too long, so we cut them off with a hacksaw.
NOTE: This ended up being a terrible idea since it let the feed spill out way to easily. Don’t do this step. We ended up replacing the elbows with un-cut elbows a couple months later.
Then we used silicone to attach the elbows in place on the bucket. The silicone we used was just a general purpose waterproof silicone that was left over from another project.
Don’t be afraid to use plenty of silicone, this is what keeps your elbows in place!
Also if your bucket has a label like mine did, make sure to remove it or the silicone won’t stick as well. We just used a razor blade and scraped it off.
Once both elbows were attached and in place we let the chicken feeder dry overnight before filling it with feed.
We took it out to the chicken run… where the chickens were promptly terrified and ran and hid in their coop. Ten minutes later though they discovered that the scary new thing in their run had food in it and were happily eating out of their new feeder.
We did end up deciding to put the feeder on a block of wood to raise it up a little bit.You could just cut the holes up higher than we did but I wanted the chickens to be able to reach the feed at the bottom of the bucket easily.
This feeder holds a lot of feed. We’ve only had to refill it once or twice a week for seven hens. This has saved a ton of time on our daily chores and keeps feed in front of my laying hens all the time.
What has been your favorite budget DIY? Comment below and share your country know-how!
Are you just getting started with chickens? Go check out my chickens 101 post for tons of great information to help you get started!
