Grandpa Feeder

Grandpa Feeder, made in China

Yeah, not a New Zealand made product any more, in fact it has been made in China for some years according to this news article.

Selling for $119.95 on Amazon 

Selling for $109.95 on Grandpas Feeders website

The biggest issue with the Grandpa feeder is the guillotine design.  In the question section some customers said  it would harm chickens.  One said she had returned her feeder because it could harm chickens.  Here is what they wrote:

 Sandra K. Anderson 

answered on June 28, 2016

  “Yes, the chicken on the side can get hurt, thats why I returned mine. I got one where the food can be poured in the center and drops down to the bottom where the chickens can feed.”

“Yes. I keep a stone on the side of the pedal to keep open during the day, then remove stone at night to close lid. Otherwise great for birds. “

 

The feeder is really pretty and looks well made, so why all the customer complaints?

The Grandpa feeder is a highly complex machine.  The treadle assembly alone has five separate parts and eight fasteners! 

There are eight separate pivot points on the door/treadle assembly, eight nuts that might fall off, eight rotating  bolts that will wear over time and become sloppy.  A good design would have been two pivot points.  The entire treadle step, treadle arm, linkages, and lid have 46 separate parts!  That is a lot to manufacture  and a lot to go wrong during assembly or years down the road.  There is a reason it originally sold for over $200.00, it is costly to produce, overly complicated, and  not so much elegant as a Frankenstein design.

That multi piece treadle is the source of the greatest weakness.  Why use five separate parts when a single treadle bar could have been bent out of steel or aluminum flat bar?  Making it out of five parts means it is going to flex and eventually break.  The PVC pipe used to connect the aluminum square tubing and the aluminum treadle plate was probably used because it was soft and easy to insert the metal screws to hold everything together. PVC gets very brittle in sub zero weather and it is not UV resistant at all. A better design would have used two fasteners to hold the step on the treadle bar  instead of the eight fasteners used.  That is a total of 13 parts in the treadle assembly alone!

The part that shoves the door open has a fatal flaw as well, it is thin for its purpose and quite flimsy.   That part is not under tension, it is under compression, and just a matter of time before it snaps.  In the picture it looks like the part wraps around behind the horizontal bar but that is simply a reflection in the shiny sheet metal.   A thin sheet metal strip like this would be fine if it was under tension but under compression it is going to flex and snap or allow the door to bind.

According to the online reviews the feeder leaks when it rains, probably because of the inadequate overhang of the lid on the corners.  The lower section where the lid comes down also has a slight raise, not enough to shed the water of a heavy rain.  Several of the positive reviews mentioned leaking and the need to keep the Grandpa feeder under a cover.

The feeder doesn’t have an  lip either so they had to add a wire grid in an attempt to stop the birds from raking feed out onto the ground, unsuccessfully according to one review.    A simple 1/2″ horizontal lip bent on the front part would have eliminated the need for the wire grid for the vast majority of birds.  A huge number of the positive reviews mentioned that the wire grid prevents the food from flowing properly and they warn to check the feed level and push feed down with your hand if needed.

The most dangerous part of this feeder is the multitude of pinch points on each side, a total of six rotating parts, each that could trap a chicken’s feet or head, but the biggest danger is the two pinch points caused by the two side guards, allowing a perfect place for a bird to get caught.  Several reviews have pointed this out and either returned the feeder or block it open during the day to negate the risks.

One thing you will notice even on the positive reviews of the Grandpa feeder is that it takes weeks, some times a month to train the birds.   The manufacturer recommends using a pair of “training bolts” that are moved down succeeding holes, gradually allowing the lid to close further and further till it closes all the way down.  This is a necessity as the lid is flying up in the chicken’s face and over its head, something that even you and I would hesitate to use even though we know the lid won’t come crashing down until we step off the treadle.  A properly designed feeder door swings in, not up, and uses a fraction of the pinch points, parts, and fasteners.

Clogging seems to be a constant problem according to the reviews and that is likely caused by the angle of the bottom of the feed tray and the lack of sufficient height so there is enough pressure to overcome the friction of the feed on the sheet metal.

Several of the Grandpa feeder complaints covered the fact that mice can still get into the feeder, from an ill fitting lid or because of the lack of any spring loading on the door.  There is no heavy counterweight and no spring, and the mechanism itself is fairly balanced so there is no resistance to prevent a mouse or rat from simply pushing the lid up and climbing in.  And at least one review said there is still some space at the top that allows mice to get in.

Finally there are several complaints about shipping damaged caused by the lack of proper inner packing.  That is the fault of the manufacturer cutting corners due to the falling price the market will pay for their product.  Good inner packing will protect a product from a head high fall, usually Styrofoam or cardboard crush zones.  That does add to the cost and the inner packing makes the boxes larger which costs more and adds to the dimensional weight charged for shipping the product.  Yes, UPS treats packages like the old Samsonite commercial with the gorilla and the suitcase but that is to be expected and inner packing is a must.

The price has come down considerably in the last year, from over $200.00 plus shipping to around $120.00 plus shipping and to be fair the Rube Goldberg contraption is likely very expensive to manufacture due to the extraordinary number of parts and fasteners.  I would expect the price to plummet further as the increased competition erodes the company’s market share.