Saturday, May 30, 2015

Chicken Feed Gauge

I've mentioned before how Jason is designing the chicken coop to be as functional as possible from the outside.  We have the egg-gettin' doors, the pulley system to open and close the chicken door and he moved the window so that it opens outside instead of in.  (You can check out all those cool features here!)  Now we don't even have to go inside the coop to see if the chickens need more food.  This is so genius!
 
First, Jason made feeders out of PVC pipe and mounted them inside the coop using galvanized steel pipe strapping. 

 
He then drilled a small hole about 1-2 feet above the feeders to the outside of the coop.
 
 
Using fishing line, he attached a small weight with a block of wood to the line inside and a weight with a bobber to the line outside.
  
 
The wood sits on top of the food in the feeder.  As the chickens eat the food, the wood lowers down, raising the bobber up.
 
 
Once the bobber is nearing the top of the door, we know it's time to fill up their feeders.
 
  
 Isn't this such a great idea?  We plan on doing something similar with their waterer too, but haven't quite figured out what will be their waterer yet.  Stay tuned!
 
~ Sara :)
 
 

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