The Feeder That Made the Rats Give Up

I'll tell you exactly how this started, because it wasn't the feeder and it wasn't the rats. It was me. I set a big stainless dog bowl of layer feed in the run one October, plain and simple, because I was sick of refilling the little plastic feeder every other day and I told myself I'd clean up the mess later. Later never came, the way it usually doesn't.

The hens knocked half of it onto the dirt with their scratching, the way hens will, and I just kept topping the bowl off because it was easier than admitting I'd set it up all wrong. Then one evening in late fall I went out to lock up and heard a rustle in the shavings I did not like. I stood still in the dark and waited. A rat, bold as a squirrel, walked right up to that bowl and helped himself like he owned the place. I'd seen the name Grandpa's Feeders thrown around on the chicken forums for months and never given it a second thought. That night I finally did.

I got rid of that one with a trap, and I felt pretty pleased about it right up until a second one showed up a week later, then a third. By midwinter I was checking traps every morning before coffee, and the feed bill told the whole story plain as day. I was buying a 50 pound bag twice as often as I should have been, and I knew in my gut where half of it was going and what it was paying for. The rats weren't just living off me anymore, they had moved into the coop walls for the warmth and were even stripping the eggs from the nesting boxes. My morning walk used to be the best part of the day. That winter it turned into a patrol.

It felt like a war I'd started and couldn't stop. So I sat down one night with a cup of coffee and started reading up on treadle feeders. The idea is simple enough: the feed sits under a lid, and a bird has to step on a pedal heavy enough to open it. A chicken's weight trips it. A rat, a mouse, a starling, all of them too light, get nothing but a shut lid. Grandpa's Feeders kept coming up as the one people put at the top of the list, so I finally ordered the 20 pound galvanized model and hauled it out to the run.

The first few days Nelly, my oldest Barred Rock, acted like the pedal was a trap. She'd study it from a foot away and mutter at it. But chickens are quick, and they learn off each other. One of the younger hens figured it out by the end of the first week, and inside a month the whole flock was working it without a second thought, all thirteen of them lined up and taking turns.

The part I didn't expect was the quiet. For the first time in months I could go out at night, shine a light in the shavings, and see nothing moving. I stopped buying traps. I stopped walking the coop walls looking for fresh holes. The rats didn't fight the feeder, they just lost interest and moved on, because there was nothing easy to eat anymore.

Two 50 pound bags last me what the label says they should last now, for the first time since I started keeping birds. That alone covered the cost of the feeder before the first winter was done.

The other part, the one that surprised me most, was the money. Two full bags last me what the label says they should last now, for the first time since I started keeping birds. The hens eat when they want, the feed stays dry under that lid, and I'm not dumping a bowl of soggy, scratched-out mash into the compost every Sunday. Over a season that adds up to a real number, and it covered the cost of the feeder before the first winter was out.

I'm not going to tell you it's perfect, because nothing in a coop is. The lid tension takes a little getting used to, and on the worst mornings of mud season I have to give the treadle a tap so frost doesn't stick it shut. But it's galvanized steel, it sits outside in Missouri weather all year, and it has outlasted every plastic feeder I've owned put together. Grandpa's Feeders made this piece of my morning quiet, and I have not once regretted it.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you've got scratch marks along the coop walls, or little tunnels under the run, or you're just tired of the feed bill, start with the feed before you start with poison. A rat will not stick around a place where there's nothing easy to eat, and a treadle feeder is the single biggest step you can take toward making that true. Grandpa's Feeders is the one I'd spend my own money on again, and I already have, because a quiet coop at dusk is worth more than any gadget in the poultry aisle.