I don't care whether you feed your chickens in pan-style chicken feeders, large range-tank chicken feeders, small barrel-type chicken feeders or open trough chicken feeders – at the end of the day you lose feed to the weather, wild birds and rodents. If you raise lots of birds, you will waste pounds of feed very week with unsealed chicken feeders – unless you use the new to North America, Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder.

The Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder consists of a beautifully constructed metal container with a lever-operated weather-tight lid that controls access to the feed. You might be wondering just how a lidded chicken feeder can allow your flock to feed, while keeping mice, rats, sparrows, starlings and the weather out. The magic is coiled up in the spring-loaded lid, which is opened when your chickens step up to the platform-like perch. That’s right, the weight of even one Bantam hen on the perch is sufficient to lift the feeder’s lid, which gives her access to the clean feed inside.

Because of its unique design, the Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders deny access to wild birds and rodents up to about 13-ounces (that’s a pretty good sized adult rat) with the smaller model and 31 ounces with the larger unit. Obviously, these feeders are not designed for use with small chicks, but they work very well with adolescent and adult birds. Because of their storage capacity, you can fill your Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder and forget it for more than a week (depending on how many hens you have).

When introducing the Grandpa’s Feeders to your birds, you will want to give them a bit of a training session. You can prop the lid open initially and/or sprinkle a little feed on the perch platform (step plate) and lid. You will be surprised at how quickly the birds learn the trick. Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders are not goat-proof or sheep-proof so if you allow your hens to range with larger grazing animals you will need to find a way to isolate the chicken feeder. Portable electric fence (conductor high enough to allow chickens to pass) or any manner of portable creep pen can be used to keep your Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeder safe from marauding lambs and kids.

Though they aren’t cheap to buy, the Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders are built to last. No more UV rotted plastic or corroded metal troughs – with Grandpa’s Feeders you will save money on feeder repair and replacement and you will save money on feed. Your hens will thank you too because they won’t need to sort through the rat droppings for morsels of grain, or make due with rain-soaked moldy or fermented feed.

Grandpa’s Feeders chicken feeders have been in continuous use for nearly 15 years in New Zealand with most original feeders still in place. Grandpa’s Feeders entered the Australian market in 2007 and they’re now available in North America. I have fed my share of mice, rats and starlings over the years, using all manner of chicken feeders. All that waste is now a thing of the past.

GRIT associate editor, Caleb Regan, texted me one evening last week to know whether the funnels that had been sighted several miles southeast of Carbondale, Kansas had crossed my farm. I had seen some weather on the way home, and noted a certain closeness to the air while doing chores, but I was blissfully unaware that tornados were on the prowl in my neighborhood. Sometimes it's just not possible to keep tabs on Mother Nature down in rural Osage County. Mostly, I don't even try to keep tabs.

Back in the late 1980s, I watched a tornado blow up a neighbor's barn just across the section. I was transfixed by the sight, sound and power of it.

I was amazed by how quickly it appeared and how rapidly it moved. The thing about the prairie is that most of the time you can see weather coming -- all you have to do is pay attention.

In the 1990s, while cultivating half-mile-long rows of newly-planted South Dakota shelterbelt, my long hair quite suddenly stood up and bushed out from beneath my Stetson.

I caught a good whiff of ozone as I dove from the still-cultivating tractor and hit the earth a split second before the bolt of lightning obliterated a century-old Cottonwood tree growing in the creek bottom about 100 yards away.

As fast as that squall snuck up on me, it was gone -- poof. Lucky for me, I managed to roll out of the cultivator's path and catch up with the tractor before destroying the young trees.

Powerful tornadoes, and other damaging weather have avoided my 1907 four-square farmhouse for the past 103 years. I anticipate that the place will stand more or less unmolested for the next 103.  If not, so be it. There's nothing I can do about the weather on my patch of the Kansas prairie. And that's exactly the way I like it.

As useful and flexible as it is, portable electric fencing can be a bit of a tangle when it comes to implementation – but that no longer needs to be, thanks to the new SmartFence system from Gallagher.  Anyone who has lugged electric netting or attempted to manage an armload of step-in posts, two or more spools of wire and a solar charger while walking across the pasture knows that setting up and taking down portable electric fencing can be vexing on the very best of days. Thankfully, the innovative folks at Gallagher felt our pain and created the SmartFence to kill it. Imagine my excitement when I first learned of this “secret” new product a few months ago. Imagine my joy when a SmartFence system arrived at my farm a couple of weeks ago and well ahead of its North American debut.

I’ve been making use of portable electric fencing for as many years as I’ve had grazing animals and poultry in my care – and that’s a lot of years now. I’ve struggled with various reel designs and different kinds of conductors – I even once welded up a 2-wheeled cart that featured compartments for step-in posts, chargers and batteries and self-winding spindles for handling up to three spools of poly wire. When I tore into the SmartFence box, I was practically trembling with anticipation – what I found was a beautifully engineered and self-contained 330-foot long, 4-reel, 4-conductor portable electric fence that had all the posts, anchors, guys neatly organized in a package that is as intuitive to operate as it is effective at controlling stock (and dogs). I knew just where I wanted to use the fence first – to enclose a lush patch of red clover and fescue grass that the sheep had been reaching through their pasture fence to get at.

Setting up the fence is as easy as loosening the tension on the integrated reel system, setting the anchor post (I tied its top to an existing fence) and walking. Since the conductors are already threaded through the posts the poly wire played out easily and without so much as the hint of a tangle. It took me about 3 minutes to setup and position a couple hundred feet of  4-strand electric fence – yes, the sheep were quite excited when I opened their pasture gate. Three days later I reversed the process and moved the fence to a location that I was planning to mow but have decided to let the sheep graze down instead – all thanks to the SmartFence.

Gallagher’s SmartFence system comes with an excellent set of  instructions, but being the guy that I am, I cast them aside and just got down to fencing. I credit the company with making the SmartFence’s design so intuitive that setup and takedown are virtually foolproof operations. I have gone back to read the instructions (I read manuals and instruction sheets before bed) and found them to be clear and even learned a couple of tricks for stabilizing the end post that I didn’t intuit on my own.

Folks that know me know that I am quick to sing the praises of electric fencing. I think it is easier on the land, the wildlife, the stock and the humans. Sure there is a wee bit more maintenance with electric fencing due to issues relating to short circuits and the like, but the maintenance is easy work compared with high-tensile wire fence or barbed wire fencing. And with a combination of permanent and portable electric fence, you have infinitely endless possibilities for managing the animal flow around your place. The SmartFence represents a paradigm shift in how we will deal with portable fencing well into the future and is every bit as important a technological leap as were the invention of the low-impedance solar charger and step-in plastic posts.

The SmartFence was released in New Zealand earlier this year and has received reviews every bit as rave as my own. Look for this innovative new product ($259.99 MSRP) at your local Gallagher dealer sometime this fall.