No way that treadle feeder is ever going to not waste feed, a piss poor design in my opinion. They bury the feed tray way up inside, probably thinking about rain, but the poor hens have to stick their head into a cave to eat, losing their side vision, as prey animals that is scary to them. The feed lip is miniscule, you need two to three inches in height, plus at least a 1/2" lip extending at a right angle into the feed hopper to deter raking, and you need the option to add a feeder lip extension to raise the feed lip another inch or so to deal with the rare hen that just loves to rake.
The other is the angle of the feed tray in relation to the "throat" or opening where the feed flows. In a well designed treadle feeder you have a thin layer of feed "stacked" coming down the tray until a few inches from the bottom where it begins to pile up no more than an inch or two at the bottom. In other words, the flow of feed is choked off by the layer of feed coming down from the throat to the feed pile at the bottom, angle of repose would be the engineering term in civil engineering. You have to have that right before you mass produce a treadle feeder or it is going to waste feed and waste the customer's money as well.
What you can do is to try to choke off some of the flow using some cardboard to throttle down the flow of feed. Sometimes if the feeder is wobbly and shakes a lot in use, that can cause excess feed flow even in the best designed feeder.
Please people please, pay a lot of attention to the negative reviews on products and avoid the in-house shopping cart reviews unless they are backed up by plenty of independent NON AMAZON purchase links or any sort of link back to a shopping cart. Those are affiliate links, folks lying to their readers to eek out a few percent commission off the sale. No avoiding a link to the product web page but try to skip even that by just googling the company and finding the item on your own versus following links back.
Junk feeders like this give treadle feeders a bad reputation. But the plastic used on the feeder ought to have been a big old red flag.
The other is the angle of the feed tray in relation to the "throat" or opening where the feed flows. In a well designed treadle feeder you have a thin layer of feed "stacked" coming down the tray until a few inches from the bottom where it begins to pile up no more than an inch or two at the bottom. In other words, the flow of feed is choked off by the layer of feed coming down from the throat to the feed pile at the bottom, angle of repose would be the engineering term in civil engineering. You have to have that right before you mass produce a treadle feeder or it is going to waste feed and waste the customer's money as well.
What you can do is to try to choke off some of the flow using some cardboard to throttle down the flow of feed. Sometimes if the feeder is wobbly and shakes a lot in use, that can cause excess feed flow even in the best designed feeder.
Please people please, pay a lot of attention to the negative reviews on products and avoid the in-house shopping cart reviews unless they are backed up by plenty of independent NON AMAZON purchase links or any sort of link back to a shopping cart. Those are affiliate links, folks lying to their readers to eek out a few percent commission off the sale. No avoiding a link to the product web page but try to skip even that by just googling the company and finding the item on your own versus following links back.
Junk feeders like this give treadle feeders a bad reputation. But the plastic used on the feeder ought to have been a big old red flag.
