This is why we made this website….
While this is a feeder picture might be of a different style Olba feeder, belonging to a guy that thought his bird was injured by “pecking”, it shows just how dangerous these deep style feeders can be to the chickens.
Full width treadles are not safe nor are they truly vermin proof as customer reviews sometimes point out. The rats and wild birds can walk right up on the wide treadle with plenty of room for plenty of buddies, and if their weight alone doesn’t trip the treadle and open the door they can simply push the door open due to a lack of a proper counterweight system and a spring pre-loading the door.
Olba, a European manufacturer, offers their standard plastic top/plastic treadle/plastic feed tray and bottom feeder but they also will make variations of their feeder, even custom make a feeder to your specifications. But they all revolve around the basic side panel with the deep recessed door like the Olba feeder in the picture above.
Customer with Bloody Head Chickens Gets Slapped on the Head by the Re-Seller Too
We found this comment on an Amazon customer review section for the Olba Feed o Matic sold by a re-seller of the Olba Feed o Matic treadle chicken feeder, a company named RentAcoop. The screen shot is tiny so here is a link to read the actual customer review and the reply by RentAcoop.
The comment says: “The hens heads were beaten up by the door – to the point of bloody heads – the pellets do not flow easily.” And the reply blames the bloody heads on the chickens fighting…. not getting trapped in the Olba Feed o Matic sold by RentAcoop. Now really…rarely do ALL of the birds fight and rarely do ALL of the hens get bloodied up. It is always one, two at the most.
The re-seller has an inventory of these items, shipped in at great expense and they want to recover their money by selling the feeders, we get that, but dismissing the customer’s complaint without asking for proof… and they probably knew better than to ask them to post pictures, is not good customer service.
Never Trust Amazon Reviews
- The reviews can be manipulated, re-sellers set up Amazon IDs and post fake reviews, some even purchase their own products through the other ID accounts and post “verified buyer” reviews
- Prior to late 2016 Amazon allowed product give always in exchange for reviews, you will see that almost all of the first ten initial reviews for the Olba feeders were free product reviews
- Amazon still gives away their products in exchange for reviews but has stopped other sellers from doing the same
- As a reviewer, do you imagine that you are going to get another free product if you turn in a bad review?
Uh Oh! Busted!
The picture to the left if you are viewing on a laptop or desktop is an enlarged section of the Unicorn Smasher screen shot below the enlarged section. Unicorn Smasher is a Chrome plug in that can list the sales and other info from Amazon search pages by accessing the Amazon data that is usually unseen when using a browser.
What it shows is 77 reviews for the Olba Feed o Matic, with about 50 of the 77 being “verified buyer” positive reviews. The problem being that they only sold 38 of the Feed o Matic feeders and the sales total pretty much matches 38 sales.
Three lines below it shows another anomaly, 21 actual sales, with the dollar sales confirming it, and 134 reviews with the majority being “verified buyer” reviews. Note how the rest of the listings will have a ten to one ratio of sales versus reviews, about what is expected as most customers don’t leave reviews.