Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service Poultry Science Department Lafayette, Indiana
Mimeo P-65 December 1958
Feed Your Layers Mechanically?
By Joe W. Sicer
Is my laying flock big enough to justify a mechanical feeder? How much time will it really save? What does it cost to operate? These are questions you may well be asking yourself.
The competition that you, as a flock owner, must meet if you are to continue long to make money from eggs is probably not from the other flocks in your county but from the most efficient egg producing area in the country.
consumption or egg lay between hand fed and mechanically fed layers.
Some poultrymen feel that the frequent movement of feed in the mechanical feed trough is beneficial. Perhaps, in their flocks, it is.
Just where this area is going to be is still anybody's guess. It seems to be fairly sound reasoning, however, that the egg producers in it will have large size operations that are well mechanized.
This does not mean that the sideline poultry flock of the midwest is doomed. It does mean that if an egg producer is going to operate at a reasonable profit, he is going to have to take advantage of every practical efficiency available to him.
The mechanical feeder is one device that many egg producers can use to advantage. The size of flock that will justify the use of mechanized feeding spends largely upon the value of the caretaker's time and the interest charge.
The constant low level of feed maintained in the trough of a mechanical feeder tends to minimize feed wastage as compared to hand filled troughs which, at best are over filled occasionally. With troughs that are filled more than a third full of feed, the feed wastage can easily run as high as 5 pounds out of every 100 pounds. Without an inner projecting lip along the edge of the trough, it may be even greater.
It is true that mechanical feeders need servicing to keep them in good operating condition. They need watching to make certain that they have not jammed at a corner and piled up feed on the floor.
The way some are installed, they can be a nuisance at house cleaning time. But they can cut the time needed to feed.
High wage rates and low interest charges (based on the return that could earned by investing available capital other parts of the farm business) make mechanization profitable and small operations, but low wages and high forest make it prohibitive except for large flocks.
Production results about equal - - -
 Before you get down to figuring State should know that a study at the State College of Pennsylvania showed significant difference in feed
How much time can be saved? -
Before you can figure the value of the time you can save, you must know hew long it takes you to feed your flock by hand.
Hand feeding 100 hens averaged 2 to 3 minutes a day on 30 Illinois farms studied. These were mostly small flocks. In Washington, forty-one pens of layers were studied with most of them between 500 and 1500 birds. The range of time required for feeding was from 0.3 minutes to 3.4 minutes per 100 birds per day with an average of 1.08 minutes.