How To Make a DIY No Waste Chicken Feeder

Mark the bucket for the port holes

• Turn the bucket upside down on a work table.
• Measure down the side approximately four inches from the closed end of the bucket, and make a pencil mark on the outer wall (the mark will be on the outside of the bucket, closer to the true bottom of the bucket than to the top).
• Rotate the bucket 90 degrees and repeat three more times until you have a total of four marks on the bucket.

Drill and clean the holes

• Using a three-inch hole saw, drill the first hole by aligning the drill bit with your mark.

• Repeat this step until you have drilled four three-inch holes.
• Smooth away any plastic burrs in the holes with sandpaper.
  • Pro Tip: This makes a lot of tiny plastic debris, so do it where it will be easy to sweep up, so the plastic bits don’t get into the soil.

Insert the feeder ports into the bucket

Note: There are several brands of chicken feeder ports available. We chose these feeder ports from Dr. DuDu because they have a rain hood over each port, as well as a sliding feed door that controls feeding portions and helps keep rodents and pests out of the feed.

• Turn the bucket right side up.
• Insert the first feeder port into the first hole. Make sure that the feeding hole is facing the bottom of the bucket, and the rain hood is on the top. The majority of the port should be inside the bucket.

• Slide the gasket over the portion of the feeder port that is inside the bucket.
• Hand-tighten the retainer nut onto the inside of the feeder port.

• Repeat this process until all four feeder ports are installed in the bucket.

Finish it up

• Wipe the inside of the bucket to make sure all of the plastic debris is gone.
• Fill the bucket with feed.

• The feeder will automatically keep the feed level accessible to the chickens as long as you keep it filled higher than the feeding ports.