Keeping chickens is extremely rewarding, but it can also be hard work – so any ideas that reduce the amount of time you have to spend on them are always welcome.
Feeding is one aspect that can eat up a lot of time, so we’ve had a look online to see what ideas people have come up with to make things easier – and as a result, here are our favorite 27 plans for how to make a chicken feeder out of PVC pipe.
1. PVC Chicken Feeder: 8 Steps (with Pictures) – Instructables
Here’s a typically high-quality tutorial from Instructables, one of our favorite sources of inspiration whenever we have a DIY project in mind. It includes clear instructions, a list of all the materials you’ll need and plenty of images to show you what you should be doing. A great plan and one we’re sure lots of people will be keen to try themselves.
2. DIY Automatic Chicken Feeder Simple PVC Design – 5-Minute Build For $12
The title of this YouTube tutorial tells you everything you need to know – it’s a video that teaches you how to make a chicken feeder from PVC pipe that won’t cost you more than $12 and only takes five minutes to complete. Simple, effective and extremely affordable – what more can you ask for?
3. DIY Chicken Feeders from PVC – Sugar Maple Farmhouse
The bloggers who wrote this post tell us that they first found the idea for making a DIY chicken feeder on Instructables. However, they decided to modify the design slightly to adapt it more to their needs, and this plan is the result. As you can see from the pics, the chickens look happy, and the feeders also help reduce bug and vermin infestations. Great job!
4. PVC Chicken Feeder…Improved Design!
Like in #3 above, this YouTuber also took inspiration from other plans online but then set about trying to enhance the basic design by adding a few modifications of his own. Check out his video to see how he came up with his improved design – and how he went about putting the whole thing together.
5. How To Use PVC Pipe for Chicken Feeder – Daily Engineering
As this blogger writes, there are many advantages of using PVC pipes to make chicken feeders, with the main ones being their affordability and ease of construction. Anybody will be able to copy this simple design, even those with only minimal DIY skills – and if that sounds like you, this is a plan you should appreciate.
6. DIY Easy Chicken Feeder (Cheap!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIHqO2YAD4M
In his video, this young YouTuber teaches us how to make a cheap and easy chicken feeder from PVC pipe. Often, there’s no need to overcomplicate things when a simple solution works just as well – and this plan is a perfect example of this philosophy.
7. DIY PVC Chicken Feeder for Small Coops – My Pet Chicken Blog
If you have a small chicken coop and hate wasting bird feed, this plan will be perfect for your needs. The feeder has a small footprint, it will save you time feeding your different chicken breeds and it will also minimize lost feed since the hens reach into the feeder with their beaks instead of scratching around in it with their feet. A great design and one we’re sure lots of people will want to copy.
8. The Best ‘No Spill’, ‘No Waste’ Chicken & Duck Feeder (PVC)
The automatic feeder this YouTuber shows us how to make was originally intended for ducks, but it would work just as well if you keep chickens. It’s designed so that birdfeed is not spilled, reducing the amount that gets wasted – and since it dispenses food automatically, it will save you some time too. As you can see in the video, it works perfectly – give it a watch and see if it’s something you might like to try building yourself.
9. PVC Chicken Feeder: How to Make a Feeder from a PVC Pipe
What strikes us about the photos of this chicken feed system is that it’s so clean – both in terms of not having lots of food spread over the floor and also in terms of workmanship. It’s a highly professional design, but it’s also extremely easy to make, so this is a feeding solution that’s sure to appeal to lots of chicken owners out there.
10. Best PVC Chicken Feeders (Cheep + Easy)
At the start of his video, this YouTuber takes the time to explain the basic physics behind why PVC pipe chicken feeders work. You might not really need to know this to build one, but it’s interesting and informative all the same. These feeders also have the added advantage of preventing the birds from pooping on their own food, so they’re a hygienic as well as a practical way of keeping chickens fed.
11. DIY PVC Chicken Feeder – Preparing for shtf
If you want to make a DIY automatic chicken feeder, this blog post is well worth a read since it’s full of little details like reminding you to smooth off the edges to stop your birds harming themselves as they feed. We like the useful photos too since they help you see clearly exactly what you’re supposed to do to copy the plan.
12. How To Make 2 Different Chicken Feeders with PVC Pipe
We’ve seen quite a few plans for automatic birdfeed dispensers, but this design is a little different. With this style of feeder, more chickens can get to the food at once, making it a good option if you have a larger flock of birds. The YouTuber also demonstrates two slightly different ways of making it, so you can try whichever you think will work best.
13. DIY Chicken Feeder – No Spill Feeders Reduce Rodents!
A big problem with some of the more traditional types of chicken feed dispensers is that a lot of it ends up on the floor, and this can easily attract rodents and other pests. However, with a design like the one in this blog post, wastage is minimized, which should help reduce rodent infestations.
14. PVC Chicken Feeder Fast Simple Easy
The innovation with this chicken feeder is that it uses a double Y-joint, which means a single PVC pipe can be used by two or more chickens at once. That way, you only need to fill one pipe to feed more birds, increasing the efficiency. Other than that, as the video’s title tells us, this plan is fast and simple, meaning you should be able to rig up one or more feeders like this in no time.
15. PVC Pipe Chicken Feeder
This PVC pipe chicken feeder was made by the same person who uploaded the video plan in #12, but this one is slightly different. It uses gravity to dispense the feed, but the feed is then spread along a longer pipe, meaning more birds can eat from it at the same time. Another ingenious idea from a creative YouTuber and an idea we liked a lot!
16. How to Build an Inexpensive Chicken Feeder from PVC – The Owner-Builder Network
If you’re a novice in raising chickens, this blog post is worth checking out. It gives you plenty of details about the basics of feeding chickens and the problems you might face – as well as providing useful suggestions for some solutions you might like to try. There are lots of photos of assorted chicken feeders too, so it will give you an idea of the kind of thing that’s possible.
17. Chicken Feeder (Easy & Cheap DIY PVC Pipe)
For those with large flocks of birds to feed, a feeding solution like the one in this video could be just the thing. There’s nothing complicated or fancy here, and it’s the kind of project just about anyone will be able to manage, regardless of their DIY skills. The birds look happy eating from it too, so they obviously approve!
18. DIY Chicken Feeder – Ideas for PVC, Automatic, Trough & More
As this blog explains, chickens are notorious for spreading their food everywhere, which means quite a lot of it ends up going to waste. For this reason, reducing waste is an important consideration when designing a chicken feeder, and the plan for an automatic dispenser this blog explains provides you with one possible solution.
19. Automatic Chicken Feeders – Save Time Raising Chickens
As well as reducing waste, automatic bird feeders are such a fantastic invention because of all the time they help you save. You don’t need to feed the birds every time they need a meal – all you need to do is top up the feeder from time to time and the feed will come out at the rate the chickens eat it. They’re easy to make too, and if you want to know how, this video will teach you everything you need to know.
20. PVC Chicken Feeder – Longbourn Farm
If you buy a ready-made chicken feeder online, you can easily pay upwards of $100 – but why would anyone do that when you can make one yourself for under $10? For anyone interested in trying, this blog has all the details you need, saving you a whole lot of money while ensuring your chickens are all kept properly fed with a minimum of effort.
21. How to Make 3 Different Chicken Feeders with PVC
In this video, you’ll learn not just one but three different ways to make chicken feeders from PVC pipe. That way, you can compare the methods and choose the one you like most – and then all you need to do is make a version of your own.
22. DIY PVC Chicken Feeder (the-chicken-chick.com)
Here’s another plan for an inexpensive DIY chicken feeder that will cost you only about $12 to make – and it will save you even more money down the line due to the reduced wastage of chicken feed. We like the creative way this blogger has used a litter pan as a dispenser so more chickens can use the feeder at once. There are also some photos of other options, so you can choose the one you think will work best for you.
23. DIY PVC Chicken Feeders and Waterers
You can use PVC pipes to make chicken feeders, but you can also use them to make chicken waterers, as this YouTuber demonstrates. Hanging the feeders like this also prevents the chickens from sitting on top of them, something that helps keep them a bit cleaner.
24. PVC Chicken Feeder: 5 Steps (with Pictures) – Poultry Care Sunday
Here’s a plan that teaches you how to make a chicken feeder from PVC pipe in just five simple steps. There’s a list of all the materials you need, and the post also includes photos, so in short, there’s everything here to get you started making one just like it.
25. DIY PVC Pipe Chicken Waterer
The plan in this video is a little different from most of the others we’ve included – and it’s for a waterer rather than a feeder – but we thought we’d include it anyway because if you have chickens, you need to give them water as well as food, and this YouTuber’s plan is an interesting idea. It looks like it works well too, so it’s an design we’re sure lots of people will be interested in trying.
26. DIY Chicken Feeder – East Man Egg
One of the good things about this plan is the way it gives you lots of tips and extra info beyond just telling you how to construct your chicken feeder. It also gives you a couple of different ways to make a feeder, so with a little experimentation, you’ll be able to work out which system works best for your birds.
27. DIY PVC Chicken Feeders
In this video, this YouTuber tells us about how he bought some chickens without really knowing much about them – and ended up having to leave them on his father’s farm. That meant he didn’t have time to feed and water them every day, so he needed to come up with a system that would do it automatically. He then shows us the clever ideas he thought of – and they’re definitely worth checking out because they look like they fit the bill perfectly.
Loads of great ideas for keeping chickens fed
As we have seen, there are loads of great ideas online for making inexpensive DIY chicken feeders.
We’ve enjoyed collecting these plans, so we hope you’ve enjoyed reading and watching them too. And above all, we hope we’ve helped you find all the ideas and inspiration you needed for building a chicken feeder of your own.