That Quail Place Forum
Raising Gamebirds => Build It Yourself => Topic started by: TENNESSERED on September 05, 2009, 11:33:55 AM
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First of all, for you guys who are raising hundreds of birds this is not a good idea. I am a hobbiest I keep only a few birds of each species, usually no more than 20 in each pen. I have been using these juice bottles for a couple of years and they work great for small numbers of birds. This is my latest usage. My coturnix are the most wasteful birds I have. With food costing almost $10 a 50 pound bag I am always seeking ways to be more efficent and to try to keep the birds from wasting any. As you can see in the pictures these are the kinds of bottles that cranberry juice or apple juice come in. I use them because the bottles are stronger and more ridgid so the birds can't bend them or break them and my wife drinks a lot of cranberry juice so I have an abundant supply. You can easily adjust the feeder for any size of bird. I use them for all my birds from pea fowl to button quail. For larger birds which can reach futher you simply cut the simi-circular openning higher, for smaller birds lower. In my largest single pen I have three adult peafowl, 7 bb reds, 5 silkies, 6 japanese green pheasants and three adult golden roosters. I use three of these feeders placed around the center support, one placed lower for the smaller birds. For all of these birds I feed about 2 peach cans of the mini-pellets daily. In the coturnix pen that the pictures are of I put in a little more then a 10oz soup can a day. This is for the 8 adult coturnix. There is always food left over the next morning. For the water container I simply cut the hole a little higher so that it ends up holding about a pint and a half. This is more than enough water for them on the hotest of days. Even in my pheastant house I never run out of water in any of the 8 pens. It's becasue the birds can't waste any. In the coturnix pen I was using regular quart water bottles style I would watch them and they would end up spilling and wasting more than they drink. I always had to fill their bottle twice a day, and cleaning the dropping board underneith their cages was always a yucky job because of the water on the manure. Also with the juice bottle waterers I only have to clean them once in a while because the birds can't mess them up, and I refill them with fresh tap water everyday so alga growth is not a problem like it was in the screw in bottle waterers. For those of you like me who are not commercial breeders, you might give this a try it will save you some bucks on feed and time when it comes to cleaning