| COVERED
HAY FEEDER |
A couple of years ago, I was on line searching for
an idea for my goat operation. I visited Premier 1
and discovered their “Double Sided Walk-Thru
Feeder.” For the price of shipping and handling,
they would send me the plans for the feeder. I ordered
and received the plans.
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Since my construction is normally done with logged
timber, milled by the Mennonites, I had to break down
and actual purchase lumber - plywood. The plans called
for 4 inch by 4 inch goat panels. If I had ordered
the goat panels from Premier 1, it would have cost
me as much in shipping and handlings as the cost of
the two pieces of panel. I elected to use cattle panels
(6 inch by 6 inch) instead. Other than that one change,
I followed the directions I received.
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Up on completion, I placed the “Double Side
Walk-Thru Feeder” in the barn and began to feed
in it. It worked great! A couple of weeks after I
began using it, on a cold winter night, I decided
to throw a square bale of hay into the walk-through
portion of the feeder to feed the goats their hay.
A few hours later we went to check on the goats -
a cold January night - and found the little kids had
found the feeder. They had crawled into the feeder,
through the 6 inch by 6 inch cattle panel openings,
and were snuggled in the hay. While we watched, a
little four week old doeling got hungry, crawled from
the feeder, and found Mom for a quick mid-night snack,
then back to her cozy hay bed.
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For the next four or five months, we placed feed in
the feed hopper and hay in the walk through area.
When the warm weather finally arrived, I continued
to feed hay in the feeder; and the goats seemed to
enjoy it.
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Problem! The area around the feeder started
to mound with hay. When we cleaned out the barn, we
decided to move the feeder out of the barn. I decided
that the feeder would not last very long out in the
weather, so we had to put it under cover of some sort.
I added four uprights to each corner, rafters connected
to these uprights, the placed cross bars at the crown
and tail of the rafter. We then added ‘cheap’
tarps over the rafters and we had a covered hay feeder.
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Now in used in front of the barn, in the open, the
hay feeder holds two square bales of hay. Oh, we finally
got goat panels in Tennessee, so I replaced the cattle
panel with goat panels before I moved it out of the
barn. The kids can no longer crawl up in the hay area,
but some sleep under the feeder and in the feed troughs.
The smaller goat panels seem to cut down on the amount
of hay wasted since the goats can’t pull out
as much at one time.
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I’m considering building another for
the buck pen and another for the isolation pen.
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Material required for our adapted hay feeder:
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From Premier 1:
Four 20" x 4' Feeder inserts @ $14.50 each (I
used a $13 cattle panel -16 feet long - then later
a $22 goat panel - 20 feet long - for this…cut
to fit)
24 barbed staples (provided free by Premier 1).
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From local sources:
Ten 2 x 4 x 8' (horizontals)
Six 2 x 4 x 42" (vertical legs) CCA treated
Two 2 x 4 x 35" floor supports
One 2 x 4 x 32" center floor support
2/3 sheet 1/2" CCA treated plywood floor cut
into two 32" x 48" pieces
One half sheet of CDX 1/2" plywood cut into two
12" x 96" pieces
Forty 16d nails and 80 1-1/2" roofing nails,
or 40 2-1/2" decking screws and 30 1-1/2"
sheating screws
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I added:
Four 2 x 4 x 36” for support for my rafters
on each corner
Six 2 x 4 x 45” for the rafters
Four 1 x 6 x 8’ one on each side of the crown
and one on each of the rafter tails
A cheap tarpaulin large (8 x 12) enough to cover the
feeder from the rafter tails to the crown and down
to the other tail. (I nailed down one side or the
tarpaulin and tied the other side down with bungee
cords to allow access. I remove the bungee cords,
place two square bales of hay inside the “feeder”,
removing the bailing twine, and re-secure the bungee
cords.)
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