Judith Harbach

By the way, clay and slugs are our biggest "problem" but I noticed slugs don't eat strawberry leaves or fresh nettles.

Hi, a message for Brian Gable, you and I have a similar set up, I live a couple of miles from Bromyard, perhaps we can help each other though what my hubby and I lack is also energy , but we have met some great folk who would love to have land , both very knowledgable, both with more energy than us, both help us out. Would love to chat more.
Judith and Brian Leavesley

When I first had a group of 28 hens i did have 4 feeding stations because I was worried about the pecking order. My hens are free range and seem to have different meal times. Now i have just one automatic feeder and they seem to have learnt who eats when . No noticable fighting other than the odd peck to push someone out of the way. When they have veg and food scraps I use an 8 foot length of plastic gutter just dropped on the ground so everyone has room to feed at the same time, and its easy to clean, and its too narrow for them to perch on and poo on the food.
There are such a variety of personalities and characteristics amongst the hens , but as i said earlier they are ex commercial so perhaps they learnt different behaviour. They do get lots of human contact. Very entertaining

Hi There, I have 16 hens and recently bought an automatic feeder. I can't speak highly enough of it for the following reason. It has reduced my feed bill by half, yes half. We bought it as a solution to a rat problem that had started to escalate. We knew we lost food to pigeons etc etc but suddenly the rat population became noticable. It took a day or two for the hens to get the hang of it and I do give them some corn in the afternoon as a treat and yes they always act as if they are ravenous when they see me then turn their noses up at what I have to offer unless its their favourite treats such as cooked veg peelings. The egg laying didnt change when the feeder was introduced. They also "bill out" less feed too. I had tried all sorts of ways to prevent that from happening, there was a lot of waste. I feed them organic layers pellets and now put a tray under the feeder which stands on a pallet, which means i can pull out the tray and give them the billed out pellets rather than them becoming a yukky mess on the ground. My girls are ex commercial birds and seem a bit lazy at scratching unless its digging up paths or any plants that I want to keep. The feeder holds 20 kgs, one sack of pellets, which all winter have stayed dry. The only downside ? it clanks a bit as each hen steps on or off the footplate. Not a huge noise but if it were very close to the house I might get a bit cranky about it. It was expensive, about £100 but in 6 months it has almost paid for itself. I did think about trying to make one but in a moment  of weakness hubby ordered one. Glad he did