Chicken feeders, and the feed that goes in them

How much a chicken actually eats

Start with the figure, because everything else follows from it. Extension's guidance on feeding chickens for egg production puts a mature hen at roughly 0.25 lb of feed per day — about 3 lb a week for a 6 lb bird. Intake rises in cold weather, because birds burn energy staying warm, and falls in heat.

That means six hens should go through about 1.5 lb a day, or roughly eleven 50 lb bags a year. If your feed is disappearing substantially faster than that and the birds are not gaining weight, you are not feeding chickens — you are feeding waste, rodents, or both. The arithmetic is the most useful diagnostic in this whole section.

Why feeder design matters

Hens do not eat tidily. Given an open trough, a hen turns her head sideways and sweeps, looking for the bits she prefers — the maize in a mixed ration, the larger particles in a crumble. The rest goes over the edge, where it gets trodden in, rained on and eaten by rodents. That behavior is called billing out, it is completely normal foraging, and it is what feeder design exists to prevent.

There are exactly three mechanisms that work, and anything without one of them is marketing:

1. Ports. A hole the hen puts her head through, so her beak cannot travel sideways. Cheap, simple, effective.
2. Height. A pan hung at the hens' shoulder height gives no leverage for a sideways sweep. The oldest trick there is.
3. A lid. A treadle feeder's lid is closed unless a bird of sufficient weight is standing on the step — so nothing can be swept out, and nothing can get in either.

The rodent question

This is where the three mechanisms separate. Ports and hanging pans reduce waste; only a closed lid excludes rodents. And rodents are not a side issue: nobody gets rats because they keep chickens, they get rats because an open hopper of grain is available every night in a sheltered spot.

A treadle feeder is the only design in the category that constitutes a physical barrier. A rat is too light to open the lid and a wild bird cannot work the mechanism. That has a biosecurity dimension too — USDA's Defend the Flock guidance notes that wild birds can introduce disease to domestic flocks, so a feeder they cannot share is a disease measure, not only an economy.

Sizing the hopper

The feed itself, and the two minerals

A complete layer feed at around 16% protein provides everything a laying hen needs. Alongside it, two minerals go in their own dishes, free-choice, and the difference between them is the most common confusion in backyard feeding:

• Insoluble grit — crushed granite. It grinds food in the gizzard. Any bird eating grass, scratch, treats or kitchen scraps needs it. It must not dissolve.
• Oyster shell — crushed shell. It dissolves to supply calcium for eggshells. For laying hens only; chicks, pullets before lay and roosters should not have it.

Offered free-choice, each works as self-regulation: the hen laying hardest takes the most calcium, and the one eating the most forage takes the most grit. Mixing either into the feed removes that. The full explanation.

Pellets or crumble

Pellets for a flock of large hens: less dust, far less billed-out waste, and — the underrated reason — a hen cannot pick through them. In a crumble or mixed grain she will select what she likes and leave the rest, which unbalances the ration she actually eats. Every pellet contains the complete formula. Crumble suits bantams, young pullets and mixed-age flocks that find pellets awkward.