Hay feeder

[lakeportfarms]

A while back I posted a thread about a great deal Sheril found on Craigslist on a hay saver feeder.  Built by the Amish, used a couple of years, and then we purchased it for $400.00.  Since there was no chance I was ever going to find a deal like that again and it was working so well I decided to have some others made up (I don't have the time myself to undertake the project!).  A total of 4 of them for each of our sub-herds, and two of them we've set up in between pastures to feed the young heifers on one side and the young bulls on the other.  Due to the design it's impossible for them to get through the feeder.

Here is one of them...We're fortunate Sheril's father's business has a powder coat paint line including a large batch oven, so the feeders were powder coated too after they were welded up!  They save a lot of hay, and what falls just outside on the ground is usually picked up by the smaller calves, though the feeders are low enough that they can just barely reach in to nibble at the hay.

[dexterlady]

Thanks Lakeport, I wish I could have one built....Who made yours?...Dexterlady

[Dahdo]

Those are a thing of beauty. When you get a minute, could you snap a couple of pictures when it's empty? Including a couple showing the tray? I might see if I can get my son to weld up a reasonable facsimile. Thanks Hans.

[lakeportfarms]

Dexterlady, I know several places that do a lot of welding work that also have the equipment to bend the pan at the bottom. They'll need, or at least need access to an 8 foot (most are 10 foot) hydraulic brake to bend the pan. The rest is simple welding of mostly 1-1/2" angle, 3/4" square tube, and 1/2" round rod.

Dave, I have a bill of materials list that I made up for it that I'll copy and post here sometime in the next few days for the total material. I also have a Autocad drawing with dimensions that I made up, so I'll convert it somehow so I can post it here, or create a link where a PDF file could be posted. And I'll get some more photos of one that's empty in the next few days. It takes a lot longer to "empty" them than the old round rings took    I have a couple more to pick up at my FIL's factory next week, so maybe I could take some photos when I do that.

They aren't hard to construct once you find a source to make a pan, but to save on the cost the painting is probably the do-it-yourself part of the project for most people.  I'm really, really fortunate that Sheril's dad has such a large batch oven for the powder coat.  They're not very common, and I partially designed the feeder so it fit in there.  I only had a couple of inches of room at the top to spare, but it works out well for the Dexters since I lowered the height of the feeder to let them get into the tray.  Without a powder coat oven I'd probably get a cheap sprayer at Harbor Freight, a respirator, and use a product like Sherwin Williams Polane B (used frequently on water towers) to paint it.  The other day I did see at a Harbor Freight the material that is used on truck bed liners, a gallon of it was $40 or so, and I wonder how well that would work on the pan?  Or maybe someplace that sprays it on the trucks could even do it?

The feeders cost $1000.00 each materials and labor.  The powder coat was free for me, but I do owe him some computer work in exchange..lol...  Which when you think that a mid-range round bale feeder is $250 or so it works out well.  I would guess the savings are around 20 percent or better, and payback may be as little as a year, two max, for our extended hay feeding season.  One of the biggest benefits is that the calves and yearlings don't sleep in the feeder and soil the hay in the feeder.  And the hay doesn't sit on the ground.  We used to feed around 300 bales/year with the 4x5 rounds, and now I'm feeding at the rate of about 200/year with these feeders that I have set up, though it's not really cold yet.  An added benefit of these will probably be that they don't rub off the hair on the top of their necks, since the horizontal at the top is well above that point.

[midhilldexters]

Mike, nice feeder! I can see where the savings would come if you had a decent size herd, with a small herd not sure there would be any savings for many years. Great project though well done.

Carol K

[kansasdexters]

Hans,

Your hay feeder is very similar in design to the Bextra haysaving feeder. We have two Bextra hay feeders and they really do save a lot of hay. They are heavy duty and very well built, and they cost around $600. The Bextra hay feeder was evaluated at Oklahoma State University and shown to significantly reduce hay waste. They will pay for themselves in less than 2 years, based on hay savings alone. Here's the link: bextrafeeder.com/products/bxh/

Patti

[lakeportfarms]

Carol, on the contrary, we've found they are actually more efficient on the smaller numbers, at least when feeding round bales. On our largest group (about 35-40 right now) they'll go through a bale pretty fast, but there wouldn't be a lot of waste because I'd let them finish it off before I'd put another in. It's when the bale sits for a week or more and the calves and yearlings climb in to eat and sleep in it that we seem to lose the most hay.

For these feeders, I've made provisions to put a cover over the top that can be retracted when I load the bale, and then pulled back over to protect it from snow and rain. That combined with the fact it's not sitting on the ground should preserve the bale for longer periods of time.

Patti, do those Bextra feeders have a bottom in them to collect the small scraps and fines or does the bale sit right on the ground? Sometimes I treat the lactating cows to some Alfalfa/grass hay, and the feeder I have does a great job of collecting all of the leaves from the alfalfa. They'll actually lick the bottom pan clean.

[kansasdexters]

With the Bextra hay feeder, the new bale sits on top of the bale that has been eaten down. The Bextra hay feeder is open on the bottom. If we let the cows almost finish a bale, then we can pick up the hay feeder with the tractor and move it. What's left inside is then cleaned up by the lower ranking cows, since the higher ranking cows follow the tractor carrying the hay feeder and then start eating on a new bale in a different location.

Patti

[lakeportfarms]

That looks like a good intermediate feeder between the normal round bale ring and the "cone" type like what we have set up. Halfway between the two in price as well. I can see where it would work well for a larger group, and I like being able to move it around in the winter to new spots. Like you, we've noticed when we do that the lower level cows will nibble away at what remains, and then ultimately they sleep on top, which is nice when we get frequent snows. Have you found that the calves do in fact stay out of the feeder?

The feeders we have now should work really well with keeping the hay dry and the snow off the drops that fall in the tray, and I've set them up with reinforcement so I can move them around easily with pallet forks on the tractor. Now the problem is there isn't enough scrap hay laying around for them to sleep on!

Our Scottish Highlands have been pretty tough to work out a good hay feeding arrangement. More than once I've had to crawl into the hay ring to grab the horns of our oldest Highland to maneuver her horns out of the ring. Do you think they could get in there even with their horns, or is the gap too small?

[kansasdexters]

Hans,

The Bextra is the best hay feeder we've found for feeding hay to horned Dexter cattle. The spacing on the bars at the base are wide apart, where the cows put their heads in to feed, so nobody gets stuck. The cone bars are too close together for any heads to get into, and the lower ring of the cone is low enough to prevent calves or cows from jumping into the base (except for one small Kerry heifer calf that has figured out how to duck under the lower ring once the bale gets eaten down below that ring). But if we put a new bale into the cone before the old bale gets below the lower ring, then none of our cows or calves can get into the Bextra bale feeder.

Patti

[lakeportfarms]

Thanks Patti, that's what I thought when I looked at the photo of the feeder. It looks like it would work really well for horned cattle. Now to see if I could find one without the shipping here being a killer on price.

[kansasdexters]

Hans,

From the Bextra website dealer map, it looks like Nevill Supply offers the Bextra hay feeders in Michigan, and they are located approximately 2.5 hours drive away from you:

Nevill Supply
Clare, Michigan 48617
Phone [phone]
Contact Deb or Don Nevill

[shortfencefarm]

Patti,
Which model of Bextra feeder do you have for your horned Dexters? Thank you and everyone else for the great information.
Tony

[kansasdexters]

Hi Tony,

We use the BXH model: bextrafeeder.com/products/bxh/

They came out with a galvanized one (instead of powder-coated), after we bought our first two, and I think that when we buy some more of these, I'll go with the galvanized finish.

Patti

[shortfencefarm]

Patti,
Thank you very much.
Tony