Saturday, August 23, 2014

Playing Catch UP and no Ketchup

The Orloffs will be twenty-two weeks on Wednesday. Here's a couple photos of one of my favorites, and then someone else decided to squeeze in for a close up!  No egg layers yet. Nesting boxes are open and ready with lots of fresh timothy hay.  

Chickens are notorious  for knocking their feed on the ground, every chance they get.  Well, that's fine and good if its crack corn or something, but the expensive stuff breaks into such fine dust after it's trampled on, that it basically becomes mouse food ;( 

Last spring I decided to try my hand at creating my own chicken feeder that can be hung up, not too easy to access by little critters at night and rain doesn't saturate the food. I've been patiently waiting for the guys to decide to try it out.... Today, they have installed my home-made rain-proof hanging feeder.  I need to tweek a few things, but basically I made it from a $4,00 chick feeder, five-gallon bucket and lid, some 1" PVC pipe, a plastic corrugated piece of signboard and a few screws to hold things in place. It holds up to 10 pounds of food at a time.   The other feeder that I made is built inside the coop, and it works real well, so far. (My apologies for the poor graphics on the last image. The angle was difficult to work with through the wire mesh. )

22 week russian orloff hen
same russian orloff hen
Nosy Russian Orloff
rain-proof home-made feeder
Cheap rain-proof home-made feeder
Blurry rain-proof home-made feeder