Found this interesting webpage....the chicken feeding station is chicken operated and closes to exclude rodents and non poultry birds from bumming free chickenfeed. Automatic Wood Chicken Feeder - BackYard Chickens Community Probably need to use tinplate to cover the wood to preven rodents from mouseholing their way in.
I like that, though it seems more suited for those with just a handful of birds. My crew gets to jostling and knocking each other around so much, that lid would be flapping more than their wings, ha! I'm going to try to make one of those soldier fly larvae compost/chicken feeders this spring I think.... maybe... still have that aquaponics setup to finish that was supposed to be up and running LAST spring, plus the bunny house, plus a fence, plus.....
Nice idea, but I imagine it wouldn't be but a matter of time before other critters would learn to use it. Let's face it.....if a hen can learn, so could any other critter who's hungry for some feed. I'd definitely look at making it out of sheet metal, versus wood, just to make it more rodent-proof. While I've never messed around with a deer feeding station before, couldn't you simply adapt one of those to handle the smaller sized feed for chickens? Plus, being battery operated, it seems to me that a quick solar recharging kit would power it indefinitely.
