Chicken feeders, judged on waste and what else eats from them

There are three approaches to feeding a backyard flock, and the differences between them matter more than the brands within each.

• An open trough or hanging feeder. Cheap, simple, and it loses feed to scratching and feeds every sparrow and rodent in the neighborhood.
• A port feeder. Feed is behind holes a bird puts its head into. Reduces scratching waste considerably; does nothing about rodents overnight.
• A treadle feeder. A weighted lid that opens only when a bird stands on a plate. Solves both, at the cost of a training period and a substantially higher price.

What Grandpa’s publishes, and why it is unusual

Most feeders publish a capacity in pounds and stop. Grandpa’s publishes the numbers that actually let you size one:

“Three to four eating at once” is the specification nobody else gives, and it is the one that decides whether the bottom of your pecking order eats. A feeder with a single port and a flock of eight means two birds spend the day waiting and losing condition. Two independent capacity figures agreeing at roughly a third of a pound per bird per day also gives you a planning number for buying feed. Our Grandpa’s Feeder review shows that check worked through against the published extension intake range, and digs out the minimum bird weight that decides which of the two sizes your flock can open.

The training period is real

Grandpa’s publishes a two-stage training procedure using included bolts, one week on each setting — two weeks in total during which the feeder is progressively less open. This is an unusually honest thing for a maker to publish, and it is worth taking seriously: a treadle feeder installed and left is a feeder your birds do not use, and hungry chickens do not solve the puzzle by themselves.

The practical consequence is that for two weeks the feed is still accessible overnight, which is exactly the period rodents are learning about it. Plan the switch for a time you can also lock the feed away at night.

The maker also notes that bantams may require a small weight added to the tread plate, which is a useful admission — light breeds are a known edge case rather than a hidden one.

The pest exclusion claim, examined

Grandpa’s publishes that the cantilevered lid “prevents access by sparrows, rats, mice and other pests.” That is a design claim rather than a tested one, and the mechanism behind it is straightforward: with no bird on the plate, the lid is closed and there is nothing to reach.

What it does not do — and no feeder does — is remove feed a rodent has already spilled on the ground, or the feed sack in your shed. A treadle feeder is one half of the rodent answer; sealed storage is the other, and the rodent page covers both.

Sizing yours

Work from the published birds-and-days figure rather than capacity. Six birds and ten days on 20 lb means a flock of ten empties the Standard in six days — perfectly workable, but not a “fill it and go away for a fortnight” proposition.

The 40 lb Large model at twelve birds for ten days is the only feeder here that supports a genuine week away, and that is really what you are buying at the larger size: not more feed, but fewer decisions.