I finally decided it was time to step it up a notch, and buy the chickens a grown-up feeder they couldn’t knock over, and a waterer they couldn’t crap in. Because they do that; crap in their water dish.
I’ve kept rodents as pets that never crapped in their water dish. A four week old puppy may be one of the world’s most useless (if adorable) creatures, but it won’t crap in the water dish. Chickens though? Oh yeah. Totally. Like once a week.
So I got really excited and placed my order. And it turns out that the feeder isn’t as big as I thought it was, and also it doesn’t have the grate that stops the chickens from flicking out their feed. And it’s a hanging feeder, which is great, but now I can’t figure out where to hang it or how that will work exactly.
The waterer is sound in principle. Except that I thought it would hold a 2liter bottle, but it barely holds a 1liter bottle. My four chickens drink half a gallon of water per day. How many of these things am I supposed to dangle around the outside of the chicken tractor in order to meet that demand? I don’t know. I’m too tired to do math.
Also, the chickens completely ignored it. Quelle surprise, as we said in the 80s.
I suggest installing a water tank on the roof of the chicken tractor to feed the waterer…
And thanks to google, 2 liters is a bit over half a gallon (cause I’m not doing that math either right now!)
My chickens wouldn’t have ignored it – they would have been too scared of it. Cuz ya just never know what might turn out to eat chickens…
Chickens are right down there with turkeys, competing for the Dumbest Creature On The Planet award.
Guindon cartoon published shortly before Thanksgiving one year back in the 1970s: two turkeys in the pen saying excitedly, “We get to ride in the truck! We get to ride in the truck!”
And God only knows what’all this will do to the Chicken Stats!
You have got to stop doing things for your chickens. They’re so unappreciative.
I do see that the cost of eggs is going down a bit.
3.75 liters = 1 gallon, ingrained forever from trying to figure out how many liters of water we would need to sail from Zihuatanejo, MX to Hilo, HI on a 32′ sailboat that on a 3K mile average made 3.2 knots/hr along a great circle route…
That them there’s math skillz that I may never use again, but dang, it sure helped convince an A/P dept. that a former English teacher could work for them
.