Comparisons with other feeders on the market
This website has a lot of information on several of the most popular poultry feeders and they do a fair job of setting out the good and bad points of the various feeders. We do earn some kicks in the shins for the noisy door but they point out we also have the soft close option and really our door is a bit noisier than the competitions because of the spring loaded door. Pick your poison, rats or a bit of noise or paying for the soft close kit.
They mention the inability for bantams to use the treadle which is a fair complaint but they don’t mention our Duck Step. They do spend a lot of time explaining why we used a narrow step placed so far back.
Our shipping costs are discussed too and why Amazon is always going to beat everyone on shipping costs. Still, the article points out that comparing the delivered cost to the advertised cost and free shipping still puts our feeder a bit cheaper in the end. We could do the “free” shipping thing but that penalizes customers that are close to Oklahoma and rewards customers that live in Maine or Washington state. Much better in our opinion to let the customer pay the actual costs of delivery for their feeder.
The only other knock on us is that we make the feeder in the Philippines. Fair enough, we would make them here if we could afford it and if we could get workers to show up for 40 hours a week.
Update 2024: Our feeder has evolved so much since this review was done. The best selling feeder, the Medium feeder, is now made in the U.S. and has been since 2021, we no longer use styrofoam packaging, using a recycled wood cage that has cut shipping damage to near zero. And the spring loaded door is much stronger with dual springs replacing the old counter weight system.
Backyardchickens.com forum posts
There are several threads on BYC.com, the forum thread where we introduced the prototype and asked for feedback, and another thread that talked about the difference between a Chicken Condo feeder and the Grandpa feeder.
Here is a good review by a guy with a DIY blog site.
Here is a very good review of our feeder on BYC.comm
Here is the initial forum thread where our product evolved
Here is a discussion of the Chicken Condo versus Grandpa feeder forum thread
This next review is about tracking expenses on eggs, the guy must be an accountant. But he did the calculations before and after installing our feeder and says our feeder saves him hundreds of dollars per year in feed costs.
The article is on Medium.com so you might have to sign up, but it is free and they have some interesting bloggers.
If you are dealing with wild birds like starlings, house sparrows ,English sparrows, pigeons, or grackles these feeders will solve your problem.