Big Island Chickens

New and Improved Seed Station Or, protecting and taking the stink out of the seeds.   My last post was about the idea of sprouting seeds for our chickens gastronomical pleasure.Since then, I have run into a few problems that I think I have solutions for, we'll see. This is my Sprouting station as built: A standard set of big box store shelf racks set up on the ground near a water source. Seeds soaked in a bucket for 24 hours (convenience, as they need only 8-10 hour soaks) then spread out in an even layer on a 10" x 20" garden tray with pre-punched holes. Problem 1. Water distribution. Dry seeds in one side, flooded on the other. Problem 2.  During the night rats and during the day the birds  are getting to the seeds eating and fouling the trays with husks and their waste. Between the two shifts, I am losing almost half the seeds to these scavengers. This is my Sprouting station as it is today: We added 5 more shelves, a larger water recovery tub for...

DIY Gravity Feed Station OR My lazy way to free feeding for the girls This is a quick drawing mock up of the feed bin I planned to build by recycling a water pressure tank that we had left over after changing out our whole house water system. It holds about 20 plus gallons of water, I am hoping at least 2 bags of feed. It has one opening at one end, and two mounting options, though it turns out I had to go with the hanging mount on the right but that will be explained later in the post. This collage shows the starting look of the tank with the pump fitting on top (pic upper left), with it removed, the standard floor toilet flange (new) and once mounted. (lower right) I did have to modify the bolt pattern a bit in the flange ring to get the standard 6 corner hex pattern. The flange comes with 6 bolt holes but they are not in a true hex shape to allow for toilet bolts. I also had to add an adapter to go from waste pipe sizing to thin wall water pipe. I used a 4" flange,...