Toolmaking Art

I made a few chicken feeders so that I could be gone for a couple of days and have the chickens kept in good shape.

Here is a close up on the watering bucket;

Here is a close up on the food;

Here is a pair of them ready for action!

Here is a store bought watering system, and one I made in action.

Here is a feeder in action.

Here are the parts, apart from the jugs needed to make it work.

Here are a pair of jugs ready to go, one with water and the other with food.

Here are all the tools I used;

Here is the jig. Very important tool. It lets you space the holes at the right height, make and even spaced pair, and even make sure they are spaced evenly around the bucket.

A note on spacing around the bucket. The more slits, the less structure the bucket has. It needs some curved walls to remain strong. The examples here may have too many slits. The ones in the chicken pictures, have three sets of two slits. This allows for decent structure. A bad chicken can block the water for the rest of the chickens, so multiple slits are needed however. I put two food buckets and two water buckets in with a coop of chickens to make sure they are ok.

Here is the setup to drill the slit holes. The drill can grab and run, so I run the drill backwards to scrape a hole instead of cutting. It still works pretty quickly.

Here is an example of where the drill can run off track quickly.

Be sure when you drill, that you are safe, the area is clear, the bucket is secure in place, and that in the worst scenario, you cannot be hurt.

After drilling holes, this is how I connect them.

Here is what is going on inside the food bucket,

Here are the food and water stands on the jugs, ready to be put in the buckets.

The stands are made from nice big pvc pipes.

Here are the food and water buckets on the jugs, ready for inversion.

The whole point here is to be able to have a lot of food and water available when I am gone for the weekend. This allows the chickens who have to stay cooped up, to stay healthy and happy.

Bob