One of the most basic aspects of keeping chickens is ensuring they’re fed and watered, and unless you want to dispense their food every day by hand, you’ll need an efficient feeder that does the job for you.
It’s a simple job to build a DIY chicken feeder that can save you lots of time and effort – and they can even help you save money by reducing the amount of feed that’s wasted. Want to know how to make one? Then here are 23 great plans we found that show you how to do it.
1. DIY Automatic Chicken Feeder – Country Living Experience
At the beginning of his video, this YouTuber promises to teach us how to make a feeder that can feed up to nine chickens for a week and a half without the need for refilling. It’s super easy to make, and even better, it won’t cost more than about $12 to build. Sound too good to be true? Then check out the video to see how it’s done!
2. DIY Chicken Waterer and Feeder from 5-Gallon Buckets – blessthismessplease.com
If you’re looking to save money, then this plan will be of even more interest to you – since it teaches you how to make an automatic chicken feeder or waterer that will cost just a single dollar. It’s based on nothing more complicated than a five-gallon bucket, and that’s all you need to keep your chickens fed and water with a minimum of effort.
3. Homemade Chicken Feeder Build – Nichols County
The chicken feeder this video teaches us how to make is a little more sophisticated – and a bit pricier too since the YouTuber estimates it would cost around $50 to make if you bought everything new. However, it’s quick and easy to construct, and it will dispense food to your flock for days on end without you needing to worry about refilling it too often, depending on how many chickens you keep.
4. PVC Chicken Feeder: 4 Steps – Instructables
The DIYer who designed this model was quite demanding with what he wanted from his feeder – he needed it to be “easy to fill, hard to spill, safe from non-chicken life forms, weather resistant, easy to make and inexpensive”. The design he came up with, using not much more than just some PVC piping, checks all the boxes though, and if you want to know how he did it, head over to the site and check it out!
5. Tour of our Automatic Chicken Feeder and Waterer – Simply Stillwell
The feeder and waterer we learn about in this video is certainly an ambitious project. Not only does it provide a regular stream of food for the chickens, but it also collects rainwater and delivers it for them to drink. There’s no detailed plan for making something similar at home, but after watching this video tour, we’re sure there will be plenty of enterprising DIYers out there who think they’re up to the challenge of building something similar themselves.
6. Our 5-Gallon Bucket Chicken Feeder – Outdoor Happens
Like the plan in #2, this is another tutorial for making a chicken feeder from nothing more complicated than a five-gallon bucket. As this blogger writes, they were skeptical at first as to whether the chickens would be able to work out how to use it – but it turned out that in no more than a minute, they were happily pecking food from the delivery system. Success!
7. How to Make Cheap Chicken Feeder – DIY AGRIC
Consisting of not much more than a long length of plastic pipe, the chicken feeder this video teaches us how to make is about as uncomplicated as they come. It’s an ingenious design though, and it did the job of saving this YouTuber a lot of money when he was just getting started keeping chickens – so give the video a watch and see if it can do the same for you.
8. The Best DIY Chicken Feeder – Keep Feed Dry and Safe from Rodents and Birds
With any chicken feeder, some of the basic requirements include keeping the food dry and keeping it safe from rodents and birds – and the simple version this video teaches us how to make does both. It’s another feeder made from just a large bucket, so it won’t cost you much to copy, and it’s also an efficient way to keep your birds fed, reducing the amount of work required to look after them.
9. DIY Plastic Bottle Chick Feeder – homesteadlifestyle.com
If you’re raising chicks, you’ll need a way to deliver their feed – but since they won’t be chicks for long, you probably won’t want to spend a whole lot of money on anything fancy, making this feeder built from a plastic bottle the perfect solution. It delivers all the food they need while keeping their living space clean and tidy. It’s danger-free too thanks to the duct tape that’s used to cover any sharp edges. A great design we liked a lot!
10. DIY Easy Chicken Feeder – Cheap!
In this video, we get to learn from this young and talented YouTuber how he constructed these practical chicken feeders using just a few lengths of PVC pipe. As he explains, he needed to find a way to stop his chickens wasting so much food, and this was his solution. It’s elegant in its simplicity, and we’re sure there will be no shortage of people who are keen to copy his design.
11. DIY Chicken Feeder – Ideas for PVC, Automatic, Tough & More
As this post explains, chickens are notorious for spreading their feed everywhere except in the feeder, so to reduce waste, you need to think of a design that prevents this as much as possible. The idea they propose here uses PVC piping and should cost you no more than about $25 – and it will save you a whole lot more than that in the long run because so much less food will go to waste.
12. The Easiest and Most Effective Chicken Feeders and Waterers You Can Make!
If you keep more than just two or three hens for eggs, efficiency in feeding and watering your flock will save you so much time and effort – and if that’s something you can relate to, this is a video tutorial you need to see. The feeders and waterers it demonstrates are designed to be as efficient as possible, which means you won’t need to spend nearly so much time constantly topping up your chickens’ food and water dispensers.
13. How to Make an Automatic Chicken Feeder: 13 Steps – wikihow.com
If you’re not familiar with WikiHow, it’s a fantastic site with plans for doing just about anything you can imagine – including building an automatic chicken feeder. As always on this site, the plan is logical and simple to follow, guiding you through the steps to make a feeder of your own. There are also plenty of useful illustrations to help you understand what you should be doing, making this the kind of plan that just about anybody will be able to copy.
14. How To Build a Chicken Feeder DIY for 25 Bucks – Big Family Homestead
In this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to make a no-mess hanging chicken feeder that should cost no more than around $25 to build. It’s a fun video to watch since this charismatic couple so obviously enjoy what they’re doing – and as you can see at the end of the video, the chickens seem to approve of their new feeder too.
15. Easy DIY Chicken Feeder – earthnailsandtails.com
As this blogger explains, he got fed up with filling his old feeder scoop by scoop all the time, so he decided to design something that would be more efficient and less time-consuming. With the design he created, he can now simply dump in a 50lb bag of feed and walk away – and if that sounds like the kind of shortcut you’d enjoy too, give his post a read to see how he did it.
16. Easy DIY Chicken Feeder – How to Make a Chicken Feeder Using an Old Container
Here’s an ingenious and creative way to make a feeder for chickens using only extremely inexpensive supplies like an old plastic bucket. The tutorial itself is quite basic, consisting mainly of a timelapse video showing how it’s done. However, that’s all you really need to make one of these for yourself, so give it a watch and see if it’s something you’d like to try.
17. DIY PVC Chicken Feeder – the-chicken-chick.com
There’s no shortage of plans for making chicken feeders from PVC pipe – and that’s because variations on this simple idea are some of the most inexpensive yet effective ways to keep chickens fed. We like this version due to the large dispenser at the bottom that allows several chickens to feed from it at once. Check it out to see what we mean!
18. Best Chicken & Duck Feeder on The Planet – DIY No-Mess Bulk Feeding
We’re always slightly dubious when we see videos with titles claiming things like “best on the planet” because that’s quite a lot to live up to. Is the model in this video the best chicken and duck feeder on the planet? Probably not. But is it a clever design that costs little to make and does the job extremely well? Yes, we think so. But you can watch the video for yourself to make up your own mind!
19. DIY Chicken Feeders from PVC – Sugar Maple Farmhouse
As this blogger writes, one of the biggest problems with feeding chickens is ensuring no other uninvited guests like rats, mice or bugs turn up to share the chickens’ meal. However, after giving it some thought, she produced a smart solution for minimizing those unwelcome visitors while ensuring the chickens had access to all the food they need. Want to know how she did it? Then head over to the post for all the details.
20. DIY Homemade Chick Feeder – Rain Country
In this video, this YouTuber explains how he constructed a makeshift feeder for the little chicks they currently have. As this idea demonstrates, you don’t need to spend lots of cash making feeders for your birds – since this one is made from just a few pieces of old cardboard. It does the job though, and those chicks look more than satisfied with their feeder. And we have to say, they look super cute too!
21. How to Make a DIY Chicken Feeder – Tree Farm Design Co.
Sometimes simple designs are best, and that describes this chicken feeder perfectly since it’s based on nothing more sophisticated than a bucket and a PVC pipe elbow. The trick is knowing how to put it all together, and if you want to know the secret, everything is explained in this informative post.
22. DIY Simple Chicken Feeder from Recycled Plastic Bottles
Here’s another great idea for chicken feeders that won’t cost you a thing since they’re made from just a few old empty plastic bottles. As you can see in the video, you can also use the same technique to make waterers, and when solutions like this are available, there’s no need to complicate matters further.
23. DIY Chicken Feeder – Plain Values
To finish, here’s one last version of the popular PVC pipe chicken feeder that we’ve come across so often. The explanations are short since the design is so simple, but as you can see from the photos, it does its job admirably, and we’re sure it’s an idea lots of people will want to have a go at copying at home.
No shortage of ingenious ideas
As we’ve seen, when it comes to constructing a DIY chicken feeder, there’s no shortage of ingenious plans online that teach you how to do it.
We’ve enjoyed collecting these tutorials for you, so we hope you’ve enjoyed reading and watching them all too – and above all, we hope we’ve helped you find the plan you need to get started building a DIY chicken feeder of your own.
