excellent free feeders-waterers

[TENNESSERED]

I have been using my own homemade feeders for the past couple of years.  They are juice bottles which I have cut a slot into and attached to the outside of my cages. They have worked out great.  They have virtually stopped the quail and pheasants from wasting feed, but they have been difficult to clean since they are either nailed to a post in the pheasant pens or wired to the sides of my qual cages.  I have just built a new covered aviary with six pheasant pens and I decided to try to re-design the system to include waterers as well as feeders in a holder which will allow me to remove them easily and clean them this is what I have come up with and has worked out great.  I am using the same bottle (cranberry juice bottles) the water side holds about a third of a gallon which is plenty for a pair or trio for one day.  the food side holds enough for a trio for two days.  They just lift out for easy cleaning!  for my frames I have used left over scrap wood which I would have burned or thrown out.  So my only real cost is the nails and brads which I use to put it together.  Total time in building is about 30 minutes

[bkvail]

I can see the hole cut in the feeder - but not sure how the waterer is?  Just a hole cut in the top half on one side?  A large hole?  Is it hard for them to get the water when the level goes down?

[TENNESSERED]

For the waterer I cut out a semi-circle out of the top so there is an area plenty big enough for them to stick their heads in and drink comfortably.  The nice thing about these juice bottles is that the plastic is less flexible and so the birds can't bend it in and distort the bottle like the thinner plastic milk jug.  They don't seem to have any problem reaching down and getting almost to the bottom.  I change the water everyday so that they have clean water.  It is never more than half gone with three birds drinking out of it.  For my coturnix, bobwhites and chuckars I cut the hole a little bigger since they are smaller in size and can't do the reaching that the pheasants can do.  Just make sure you don't cut the hole too big or they will sometimes go swimming!  Like I say it is adjustable for different size birds.

[jimmurray3]

Tennessered,  the only thing I would be afraid of is the feed getting wet when it rains. How do you keep this from happening. thank Ya Jim

[TENNESSERED]

I don't have large flight pens.  My biggest pen is about 450 sq. ft. for my pea fowl & bobs so all of my pens are covered.  I do this because here in this part of tn. we can get a lot of rain and high winds so I have use tarps and heavy visqueen to give them shelter and it works pretty good.  So, water in my feed is not an issue.  But even if your pens were not covered surly you have an area that is protected now from rain for your regular feeders?  The other thing if you leave the screwcap on even if they were out in the rain very little would get in because the opening is flush with the side and so is protected pretty well by the rest  of the bottle.

[jimmurray3]

Tennessered, I would have to use one of those big water bottles that goes on one of those drink fountains to feed the birds in my pen. But for a pair or two good idea. Thank Ya Jim

[TENNESSERED]

Yep, this is for small numbers.  It wouldn't work out very well if you have a large group of birds.  All my pheasant pens contain no more than 4 birds.  The most I am using this for number wise is my jumbo brown coturnix where I have about 25 birds.  I have three of the juice bottles mounted on the outside of pen.  I switched after watching how much of the food was wasted by the birds especially the coturnix in commercial feeders that I had bought.  For my small flock (I have 125 birds all together I am using 25% less feed using this system compared to the commercial hanging feeders I used to use.  I started using the system for waterers to make it simpler to keep the water containers clean.  I just pull them out of the frame and rinse and refill with fresh water everyday.