Grandpa's Feeders Automatic Chicken Feeder - Sturdy Galvanized Steel Poultry Feeders - Rat Proof & No Spill with Weatherproof Lid - Standard Size for 6-12 Chickens 10 days (20lb Feed)

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As for the OP's question, about the only way to ant proof anything is to borrow a trick that was used back in the day; adding some sort of moat with oil. It’s agonizing for chickens and they find it hard to walk and left untreated they can succumb to death. I knew rats will urinate where they eat and that urine causes Leptospirosis in humans but didn’t know anything further than that.

I wish I would have started my setup with this feeder--maybe the rats wouldn't have gone condo on me. Bono originally waited until other hens were on the treadle and stepped up beside them, but eventually he got the hang of opening it by himself. The manufacturer recommends using a pair of “training bolts” that are moved down succeeding holes, gradually allowing the lid to close further and further till it closes all the way down.Why use five separate parts when a single treadle bar could have been bent out of steel or aluminum flat bar? The PVC pipe used to connect the aluminum square tubing and the aluminum treadle plate was probably used because it was soft and easy to insert the metal screws to hold everything together. It takes a few weeks for them to get the hang of the feeder and some nervous chickens can take longer. I do however still have it in the open position after 4 weeks because the motion freaked my chickens out so bad they wouldn’t come out of their house😏 Not too worried about birds or rodents in their enclosed yard.

Anti-flick grill: prevents the birds from scooping feed out of the trough onto the dirty ground where coccidiosis and other diseases can contaminate the feed. The way the food storage is setup does not allow for gravity to constantly have the opening filled with food. We figured out how to make a feeder squirrel proof by moving the springs to the door and using two springs so all of the pressure is direct to the door and not leveraged through the treadle. Capacity: a standard Grandpa’s Feeder holds 20 lbs of feed, which services approximately 6 chickens for 10 days.I appreciate that the feed is secure, that my chickens aren’t beaking it out onto the ground for rodents to clean up at night, that I don’t have to fill feeders as frequently, that my birds are eating clean feed 100% of the time, and I am saving loads of money on chicken feed! Grandpa's Feeders are the original automatic chicken feeders and they have been made and sold for over Twenty Years.