How To Clean A Rusty Metal Bird Feeder

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Raising BackYard Chickens
Feeding & Watering Your Flock

How to treat rust in metal feeder?

Thread starter Sunny Side Up
Start date Aug 2, 2008

I was given a lovely 40# galvenized metal feeder. However, the bottom pan is covered with orange rust. The main cylinder is fine, clean & rust-free except for the bottom inch on the outside. The bottom pan is fine on the underside, bright shiny metal! But the inside of that pan, the part from which the birds eat, is the part that is rusted the most.

Can I still use it? As is? Should I try to treat the rust first? How? Steel wool, WD-40, Rust-O-Leum spray paint?

OK, I'm out of ideas, what do you geniuses suggest?

Get rid of it . There was a reason somone gave it to you . Any type of rust preventitive is poisinous to your birds . Buy a new feeder or do like I do and make it out of wood . Not a good thing for chickens to be eating rusted metal !

Thread starter
#3

It was given to me by someone who stopped keeping chickens (wow, did you know people could do that?) and thought I could use it with mine. I wasn't thinking of using a rust preventative but looking for something to remove or cover the existing rust. Or reassurance that the chickens could eat feed from a rusty pan and not be affected.

They certainly get their beaks in plenty of other awful stuff and go on just fine.

They'll be fine, what little if any they consume wont hurt them...

Quote:
Agreed. I would use a wire brush and buff it up a bit to flake off the worst of the loose rust but then just hose it off a let it dry and fill with feed. Will be just fine.

you can also sort of squint your left eye and turn you head a little to the right. That should take care of the rust problem with the least amount of effort on your part.

If you really want to try and remove it, there's a cleaning product called Barkeeper's Friend that may do the trick. But the rust will probably come back anyway, so you may be fighting a losing battle.

And if it doesn't clean up properly, get rid of it because the zinc in the galvanized coating is leaching into the feed and can poison them. Feeder are so inexpensive and you can make your own, that I'd never chance it...

: Jan 23, 2008

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I would scrub it with salt, lemon juice and an abrasive pad, it should get off most of the rust if its not real bad. Then just repaint it with Rustoleum (sp) or an automotive spray paint. If its so bad its flaking off it may be beyond help.

coca cola will eat the rust off anything. Soak it in that. And paint it for sure.
Rustolium dose work great.

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