ERIC E. WIGGIN'S NO-WASTE POULTRY FEEDER ... THAT YOU CAN BUILD FOR FREE!
The trough poultry feeders sold in hardware and feed and seed stores are expensive. They're also wasteful: They collect droppings, and birds can-and do-scratch both homegrown grain and store-bought mash out of the best of 'em.
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Winston-Salem, North Carolina's Eric E. Wiggin doesn't think today's homesteaders and raisers of backyard flocks of chickens should put up with that situation. Not when it's so easy to recycle a few free and/or scrounged-up materials into hanging poultry feeders that [1] do not collect droppings and [2] do not waste feed.
"I make my birds' feeders out of metal or heavy plastic five-gallon paint or food pails," says Mr. Wiggin. "The containers can be picked up free from painting contractors, restaurants, bakeries, and other commercial food operations in almost any part of the country. You'll need one of the buckets for each feeder you want to build ... plus twelve 1/8" X 1/2" stove bolts, a few feet of clothesline, and a 1"X5" dowel whittled from scrap wood."
MOTHER's Emerson Smyers recently followed Eric's directions for fabricating one of the feeders. First he thoroughly cleaned?and removed the bail and lid from -a plastic five-gallon paint bucket that was just taking up space in our research shop.
Then he measured two inches up from the bucket's bottom and made a clean cut all the way around the container's base. The bottom-complete with two-inch "rim"?was then set aside to serve as the base of the finished feeder.
Next, the "tube" which was left was slit all the way up the side. The edges of the tube were then overlapped, the overlap was trimmed off, and the remaining tube was drilled and bolted in four places to form a 6-1/2"-diameter cylinder. This cylinder would become the feeder's barrel.
Hey! This project was obviously going to be a snap. So Emerson moved right on to cut four 1-1/2" X 7" straps from the pail's lid. He also drilled 5/32" holes through each end of each strap (centered, and 3/4" in from the ends) and fastened them to the base with 1/8" stove bolts as shown.
Two 3/4"-thick blocks of wood were then placed in the bottom of the base to act as spacers, the barrel was centered on them, the straps were bent over against the barrel, and it was marked for drilling, After that, the straps were bolted to the barrel and the blocks were removed.
