Some livestock feeding techniques submitted by readers:
A tale of two feeders: sometimes sheep, mostly rams with horns, get caught in the feeder on the left. Justin and Natalie of Ferme Le Biscornu have had no problem with the one on the right. Below, you can see that the feeders have 'doors' on hinges that can be closed to save space in a narrow barn.
My friend Susan of small-scale dairy blog post fame and also longest voicemails ever fame recently sent me pictures of the system she uses for feeding her cows hay in different locations in the pasture. She calls it her cow tractor but I’m calling it a hay tractor because I’m cantankerous.
Susan tells me this trailer was sitting around unused, so she tied a pallet to it using a whole bunch of baling twine, and screwed on some side boards. The boards are high enough that the cows don't pull down too much hay at once. She can move the trailer herself, which she does every two days.
Using this system, Susan says she gets better manure and urine distribution in the pasture, she doesn't have any one section of the pasture become muddy from overuse, that the 360 degree access makes it harder for the top cows to shut the bottom ones out of hay (which happens in the barn), that she only has to load the bin once a day, and that inevitably some grass seeds are distributed around the pasture. Susan likes the fact that there are slats in the bottom of the hay bin because that way rain water won't build up. And she doesn't mind that some hay falls through, or is pulled off by the cows, because she moves the tractor every other day and thus doesn't have to worry too much about the hay falling into manure.
Jane Hutchins of Tideview Farm in East Sooke, BC was kind enough to send me photos of some feeders she and partner Robert use for their highly sought-after Icelandic sheep (why sought-after, you ask? They robbed a bank and are on the lam. I don't know. Because they're well-bred, I think). Two layers of page-wire, one on either side of the anchor posts, run parallel; hay stuffed in between. Simple, right?
Here’s the mineral feeder design Jane and Robert use for their flock. I presume they make them gate-mountable so that they can be easily moved when the sheep are moved to another pasture.
From the back. Jane tells me that other feeders, instead of the latch made of lumber, have two pieces of right angle aluminum, about 10 x 10 cm, screwed to the top. Screws are important for the whole contraption, I was told, since the sheep like to scratch themselves on the corners.
I recently received this photo from George at Castor River Farm. Says George: "Here is a pic of my pig feeder out in the woods. It has a large flat roof. I back my roll and mixer up to it and dispense just over a ton of grain into it. with this I only have to feed once every two weeks."
George again: "This is my milking stall. I bought a milking cow off a commercial farm. She could not be milked because she would not stand still. I realized that she had never stood on anything but concrete and could not get comfortable. I built this mobile stall to act as a waterer, feeder, salt lick station, weather proof cover for her and me, and to be mobile from pasture to pasture."
This one comes from Doug Peterson in Missouri: "You could use a multi compartment mineral feeder like the one in the photo and let both species of animals select the individual minerals they need."
