Animal Feeders

Welcome back! 

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! We did. 

Just in case you are wondering, we did not eat our turkeys. They are all still living on the farm.

We also have a crazy chicken living on our farm!
She likes to sleep by the back door every night.
She doesn't like to sleep in the coop where it's warm.
Sometimes she pecks on the back door
because she wants us to let her sleep in the house!

Did you look at the different types of dishes and bowls your family used for Thanksgiving dinner? This week I want to show you what we use to hold the animal feed.

The first thing I do when I get out to the barn is let the chickens out of their coop. Then I fill their feeders.

This hanging feeder is for the mama turkey and her babies, and some of the chickens that like to hang out in front of the barn. It is protected from the weather because the snow or rain will ruin their food.

You've seen this hanging feeder in other pictures. It hangs from the ceiling in the chicken pen on the north side of the barn.

Next I get the food ready for the goats and the cows.

Each goat has her own bucket for grain.
The bucket on the left is for the cows. I dump that food in a bigger feeder outside.
The purple bucket is Clover's bucket.
The white bucket behind the purple bucket is Misty's bucket.
The blue bucket is Annie's bucket.
The green bucket is Sandy's bucket.

I fill everyone's bucket, then I put the buckets in the right spot. Do you have a spot at your kitchen counter? Does each person in your family have their own spot at the table for dinner? Do you have your own desk in the classroom?

The goats each have their own special spot, too!

After I put their buckets in the right spot, I open the stall door and the goats run in right to their special spot!

Do you get upset if someone sits in your spot?

The goats aren't happy when someone else starts to eat their food. They use their head to push the other goat out of the way. Do you get upset if someone starts eating your breakfast or your lunch?

This is where each of the goats eats their breakfast.
The brown one on the left is Clover.
Behind Clover's head is Annie. Annie is on a milk stand.
Sandy is standing to the right of Annie. She is on a milk stand, too.
Misty is the goat near the blue garbage pail.

After all the goats are in their places I take the other bucket of food out to the cows. Stew eats hay in the stall.

The cows line up for breakfast just like this every morning!
They each have their favorite spot at the feeder, too.

After I feed the cows I come back into the barn and milk the goats.

Sometimes I have helpers with me in the morning.
Do they look happy to be in the barn today?

I also fill up the bird feeders every day.
This is what I see from my back door.
Do you see that pretty red bird on the feeder?
I have a good friend who knows a lot about birds,
I'm going to ask him what kind of bird that is.
*     *     *     *     *

This is the new cow shed.
Cows make a mess so I don't want them in the barn. They are hard to clean up after!
They will have their own spot out of the weather where they can't bother the goats.

*     *     *     *     *

Next week I'll show you what we do to keep the animal's water from freezing. Animals need water to drink every day, just like you do. When the temperature drops below 32˚ F we have to do something to keep their water from turning to ice.

New Feeders

We really wanted to feed inside the stalls because the hay is easier to clean up inside (there are mats on the stall floors) and the goats tend to eat more of the hay that falls down if it doesn't fall into the dirt.

The walls between the stalls are removable, and one was falling down because the wooden rails that hold the boards in place had come loose.

So while the boards were down, we decided to tie a piece of wire fencing, we call it cattle panel, to the boards.

A farmer's best friend--bailing twine!
Okay, maybe a farmer's best friend is still his dog.

You can see how we tied the fencing to the wall. We tied it in  four places along each side and twice along the bottom. The twine at the top is tied longer than the twine at the bottom. 

We only put in a flake of hay in each feeder in the summer as a treat. But I'm pretty sure we can fit 4-6 flakes in each feeder depending on the height of the feeder.

Since we used scrap fencing, some of the feeders turned out taller than others.

This feeder is taller than the first one. It's the second one we put up.

We didn't want to take down the wall to put this feeder up so I bought some eye-bolts and some wire strapping. There are 3 eye-bolts along each side and two pieces of wire strapping along the bottom to hold the fencing on the wall along the bottom.

A closer look at they eye-bolts in the wooden wall. We drilled pilot holes so we wouldn't split the 2x6 boards.

Here's a photo of one of the metal straps along the bottom.

Some of the fencing had sharp edges so Vet2Be filed them off smooth.

The only thing we would do differently is to put the smaller holes on the bottom instead of on the top. I think less hay would have fallen through. (The fencing has a row of shorter holes along one edge, you can see it in photo 3 along the top edge.)

We've had the feeders up for about two months now without anyone getting caught in them. I would worry if they hung out from the wall a little farther, one of the kids might be able to climb or jump in the side.

They seem to eat more of the hay even when it falls on the straw bedding or shavings, which means we waste less. We can easily feed 4 goats at each feeder. We usually have 5 goats on one feeder and the 2 llamas and 3 sheep on the other. I'm sure if the feeder was longer we could fit a few more around the table!

New 'Feeders'

Vet2Be's 4-H leader uses wire livestock fencing attached to the walls of the goat shelters as hay feeders. When we took care of her farm in July I really liked them and thought they worked well. I've been trying to figure out a way to have good feeders here, too.

A good feeder is one that the animals can get the food out of without making a mess or wasting lots of hay. Also, a feeder should be built in such a way that the animals can't get into it and take a nap in it.

I noticed that the gates (which have some livestock fencing attached so that kid goats can't escape) were about 8" away from the wall when latched open.  Hmmmm......, I wonder if a flake of hay would fit between the wall and the gate? If it did, voila! an instant feeder!

It turns out that 8" wasn't quite enough space so I tied some baling twine (otherwise known as 'the farmers friend') to the eye bolt in the wall, then latched the gate to the baling twine. It gave it just enough room to fit in some flakes of hay! We have used the new 'feeders' for about a week now and have really liked them. The goats can pull out bits of hay without making a big mess. It will also be easier to clean up inside the stall rather than underneath the feeder that is outside. The outside feeder is on dirt, our barn has mats since it was originally designed for horses.

The other great thing about the door feeders is that the taller animals can eat over the shorter animals. The goats can eat over the top of the sheep, and the llama and huarizo can eat over the top of the goats. In the evening there are about 4 flakes of hay in each gate, two flakes on top and two flakes on the bottom. Everyone can reach some dinner in one stall or the other!

You can't see the hay flakes in this photo, but there are two flakes that landed at the bottom of the gate.  Blackie, my favorite lamb, is in the front. He is still so sweet and loves people!

 

Another view of the gate feeder.