Hayfeeders
We usually have hay feeders available at the farm for sale. The photo immediately below shows one of our customized feeders in use. We have these custom modified so that we think we have worked the bugs out of them. Cattle can get into trouble if given much of an opportunity, as we found with the original model of these feeders, shown in the third picture below. The feeders are heavy duty, with bars welded in the uprights to prevent any head, calf or cow, from getting stuck. We also have added sheet metal to the heavy-duty rings. This prevents legs from going through and getting trapped.
Below is one reason why we improved on these feeders. No, Larry is not about to chop Vixen's head off, but he is about to spend a great deal of time sawing through the upright to free her. We originally thought by haltering her, we could manipulate her head back through the bars. As it turns out, only she knew the secret of getting in there, and she wasn't telling. It was about this time that we discovered just how much metal is actually in these feeders, and they are good and thick. Vixen was released unharmed, and we proceeded to make alterations in our existing feeders, by adding metal slats welded to the uprights.
The next improvement was actually the more important one. You wouldn't think that a calf or yearling would try to crawl in the feeder and succeed in getting its leg through one rung, and then threaded back through the next rung down from the opposite direction. Anyway, that caused some serious injury, and we went to adding the sheet metal to cover the 4 heavy duty rungs. That took care of that problem on the new feeders. We still use a few of the original feeders like this, with added slats, but open bottoms, but only for the adult cows. Occasionally they will still crawl into a feeder, but so far they seem big enough that they get their entire leg over the rungs, and don't get hung up. We never use the model for the calves, yearlings or 2 year olds.
This is a another photo of the original hay feeder. One panel is out because it had to be repaired. Again, the hay feeders we sell start with this frame, with the bottom sheet metal panel added, and the additional welded slats on the uprights, so that cows like Vixen cannot have their way with the feeders.