Here’s someone who integrated hundreds of five gallon buckets into an adobe-style wall around his house. This method would probably be a bad idea for a load bearing wall, but for something free standing like this, no reason not to!
See the full story at Instructables.
Update:
Watch our new Building with 5 Gallon Buckets video for more ideas like this.
(Click to zoom to that part of the page)
These are 3 chicken feeders we have used and recommend.
We like our feeders as large as possible, so we don’t have to go out as often to fill up chicken food. Before we built our 5 gallon bucket feeder, we used one like this for 20 Rhode Island Reds. We filled it every couple days. Unlike our metal chicken waterer, it never west rusty but when we switched to a more crumbly organic feed it didn’t flow as well. This feeder doesn’t come with a cover, which is highly recommended if your birds roost above their food.
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When we only had 4 birds we used a smaller plastic feeder like this one which worked great. It keeps the food enclosed so they can’t poop on it. If they made a larger version we would have gone with that instead of the metal cylinder.
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This is the best feeder for chicks. It’s cheap and has rounded corners so those little chicken babies don’t hurt themselves. We used a narrow mouth mason jar which seemed to fit great. When refilling, just dump all the leftover chicken feed back out into your supply before screwing it back on, or you’ll get feed everywhere. Chicks are hungry so you’ll be refilling this often until they grow up enough to use the adult bird feeders.
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I made this feeder because our old metal feeder didn’t flow well using organic feed, which was for some reason was very crumbly and would clump much more. Instead of trying to punch bigger holes in the metal feeder, I built this one from scratch. An important side benefit for us is that this new feeder is gigantic! We fill the feeder up much less now than we used to. Total cost for this project was less than 10 dollars.
The 5 gallon bucket feeder is much easier to make than our 5 gallon bucket waterer, because you don’t need to seal everything to create a vacuum inside the container.
Benefits of this Feeder over commercial feeders we have tried:
Ingredients
You will need:
You want a saucer with vertical sides because otherwise chickens will scratch their food all over the place; scratching is how they find food in the wild.
The saucer I’m using isn’t completely vertical, but it is close enough to work. Here’s an example of a “deep” saucer, which is the kind you need.
Stage 1: Drilling
Holes need to be drilled all over the place. First drill three holes in the bottom of the saucer unit.
These holes need to line up perfectly with 3 more holes on the bottom of the bucket. Flip the bucket upside down and rest the saucer on its bottom, now facing up. You can mark where to drill with a long, skinny pen or just drill right through, which is what I ended up doing.
Now we need a hole near the bottom of the bucket for feed to flow through. The largest drill bit I have is 1/2″ which isn’t nearly big enough, so I cut about a one inch round hole with an exacto knife. It is important to not cut the hole too high. I made the center of the hole roughly level with the top of the rim. It’s better to underestimate the size of the hole at first and cut away more as needed. If you have a hole saw (I want to buy this one but cannot get it shipped to Canada) you can very quickly drill a large perfectly circular hole where you need it.
I made only one hole at first, and another one later on the opposite side. Two holes in the bucket seemed to more than enough for 20 greedy chickens.
Securing the saucer to the bucket is very easy, just thread the 3 bolts through the 3 holes and attach 3 nuts. I used some extra large nuts I had lying around as spacers between the bucket bottom and the saucer.
When I filled the bucket with feed for testing, it turned out my hole was still not big enough for the feed to flow smoothly. We use an organic feed that seems to have a lot of small particle sized pieces, which prevent it from flowing easily. I kept cutting away at the holes (cutting off below the saucer lip is preferable to cutting above) until I was satisfied with the feed flow.
Only after I found the right hole size for my feed did I make another hole on the back. If you prefer, you can keep cutting holes but I felt 2 was enough for the amount of chickens we have.
If you’re building the 5 gallon bucket chicken feeder, you’ll also be interested in our other five gallon solutions to chicken care. Link: 5 gallon bucket chicken care posts.
Egg laying chickens should have a comfortable place to sit and nest if you don’t want them to lay eggs here and there and everywhere. All pre-made chicken coops or chicken coop plans will include 12″x12″x12″ nesting boxes (one cubic foot), which is considered to be big enough for all sizes of laying hen.
A standard 5 gallon plastic bucket has a radius of 5.5″ and a depth of 14″, making its volume 0.76 cubic feet, which is close enough to keep most breeds of chicken happy!
You can see that 2/3 of the lid is cut away, leaving the bottom 1/3 intact, which is necessary to prevent the chickens from kicking all the straw all over the floor. Use wood shavings instead for the best bedding. The rubberized strip is important to protect those delicate chicken feet from getting scratched by the sharp plastic edge. I would probably use a segment of bike tube for my rubberized edge, bike shops give them away free by the dozens.
The back of the nesting box is screwed onto 2x4s which run the length of the coop. This ensures that they won’t roll around.
(Update) A reader has informed me that any breed of chicken will use these types of nesting boxes – even the very large Buff Orpington variety!
There’s many more ways to use buckets for chicken care. Check out these additional five gallon ideas:
Link: 5 gallon bucket chicken care posts.
The most interesting fact I’ve ever learned about five gallon plastic buckets is that In the third world, they are so valuable that it would be unthinkable to drill holes in one! Lucky for us, five gallon buckets are so cheap and ubiquitous in the western world that they can usually be picked up for free.
Here are just a few places to check for 5 gallon buckets. Usually, people working in these places get regular requests for their used buckets, and will not think your request strange at all. Call beforehand to save yourself a trip.
If you obtain a bucket from a source that is not involved in food, like a gas station or hardware store for example, make sure your bucket is food grade HDPE (high density poly ethylene) before using it for food purposes.
Many of the above free bucket sources also will have smaller buckets available. If you grab those too, you won’t be dissapointed! It’s great having a variety of sizes to fit various uses. Check out this great 1 gallon bread box, for example.
I purchase cheap used buckets from a bulk soap retail company. See our buying 5 gallon buckets article for more on buying buckets.
There are a few times when I like to line my buckets with newspaper:
Step 2: Push a fully folded sheet carefully down to the bottom, allowing the corners to fold up, locking the sides in place.
This method works so well that you can turn the bucket upside-down and shake it, and the newspaper will not fall out!
Tip: I use broadsheet sized newspaper in this example, but when I can get my hands on tabloid-sized newspaper, I prefer to use its taller size for the sides, while using the broadsheet for the bottom only.