The Chicken Feeder I Wish I Had Bought Sooner

I did not set out to buy a chicken feeder last May. I set out to win a fight with rats.

The feeder I had was an open trough that sat on the coop floor. It cost almost nothing and it worked fine for about a year. Then the sparrows found it. After the sparrows, the rats found it. Every morning I swept a scoop's worth of layer pellets off the floorboards, and every night something came back for the rest. I was buying feed for the wildlife and the hens were getting the leftovers.

Ron told me to quit chasing the problem with traps and fix the feeder instead. He is right about half of everything, but he was right about that. I ordered the RentACoop 25lb Chicken Feeder with 4 Large Ports in May 2024 and I have not gone back to a trough since.

I had already tried the little hanging galvanized feeder and looked hard at the homemade pipe versions people build in their shops. What I wanted was something with real capacity, something the hens had to reach into instead of stand over, and something I could set down in the middle of the coop without screwing it to a wall.

What came in the box was the feeder body with a lid and a handle, four large ports with sliding covers, an anti-roost cone and an adjustable stand. Putting it together took less time than finding my reading glasses. The listing mentions a 13mm magnetic driver bit for an electric screwdriver, which sounds like nothing until you have dug through a coffee can hunting for the right bit.

By Friday of the first week there was nothing on the coop floor to sweep. That was the whole argument, settled.

It sits on its adjustable stand in the center of the coop floor now. Freestanding, no mounting, no hooks, nothing to hang level. The hens circle it, and the ones at the bottom of the pecking order can get to a port on the far side without being run off. That alone was worth the change. With a single hanging feeder, my timid Easter Eggers spent half the morning waiting their turn.

The anti-roost cone goes on top of the lid and does exactly one job, which is to keep hens from standing up there and leaving droppings in the feed. I did not think I needed it. I was wrong. My old trough had a lid I was forever wiping off before I could pour anything into it.

The ports have sliding covers. I pull them shut at night when I remember, usually right after the head count and the pop door. I am not going to tell you the RentACoop feeder is rat proof, because it is not, and neither is anything else that has feed in it. What it does is end the all-day buffet. The feed sits behind a port instead of out in an open pan, and the spill that used to be a daily mess is now a small scatter under the openings that I sweep up on Saturday.

Filling it takes about two minutes. I tip a scoop in the top, the lid goes back on, and that is the whole chore. One fill lasts my fourteen hens close to a week. I used to top off a trough every single morning, and half of what I poured in ended up on the floorboards or in something else's stomach.

Cleaning it is a bucket job. The lid comes off, the body is metal and plastic and hoses out, and I let it dry in the sun before it goes back in the coop. I do that every few weeks, more often in a wet spell. It has held up. Nothing has cracked and the stand has not wobbled.

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

I would tell you that this was not the cheapest feeder on the shelf, and that for a while I told myself the trough was fine because it was working. It was not working. I was doing the extra labor myself and calling it normal. If you have rats, wild birds, or a flock that flings feed out of a pan, the fix is not a better trap or a different brand of pellets. It is getting the feed out of an open pan. The RentACoop feeder did that for me, and the coop floor has been cleaner since the week I set it up.

I would also tell you to get the version with the stand and put it where you can reach it without crawling, and to keep your expectations honest. It will not stop a determined rat. It will not stop a hen from being a hen. It will cut the waste and give you back your mornings. And if your birds go off their feed or look sick, that is a call to the vet, not a feeder problem.