home-made-hay-holders

Cahill

Cahill

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due to having some wastage,i feel a DIY project looming.

please show me your pictures of your home made hay feeders to inspire me.
i am interested in a free-standing one made from pallets, pony sized.
thanks.
 
Ours is an old xc table turned upside down with rails attached the the open sides. Assuming not everyone has one of those lying around any old table would do. It works a treat and this week we went deluxe and put the other table next to it so feeder is now 6' square and easily holds a big bale of haylage.
 
I don't have any photos but the veg pallet boxes make great free standing feeders - wood ones on e-bay are only about £15 plastic ones more (depending on how destructive you ponies are!)
Or someone on here posted a photo of a leaking water trough that she used for feeding hay, fitted a whole bale on it's side perfectly - 100% horse safe and great recycling!
 
Sorry no pics but we use a metal cage fron an IBC water cube. The holes on the cage are quite small so no danger from hooves getting stuck. The cage is sturdy but I can man handle it to move to a different part of field if it get's a bit churned up. Works a treat no waste and my horses much happily from it contains 8 haynets prob more if you really pushed it down.
 
We had this arrive to deliver some plants for our employers....

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It is built around a pallet so the hay doesn't touch the ground inside but the dust does fall through. Heavy enough not to be pushed around but could just about be dragged (by me! easier with OH as well) to a new location when the ground got poached. OH added the cross bars in the top as at the time I owned a TB who would plunge his nose in and shove.... so all the hay would come out the other side and get poo'd and pee'd on! So we made it a little more difficult mwahahaha! I left it behind when I moved off the field but do regret it a bit now.....
 
Not homemade, but I have just been sent a Hayhutch to review for my website, 2 days in and I am impressed. I will be reviewing it in a week or so but i can say I reckon its worth the money.
 
If you go with the pallet idea then do put a pallet on the bottom too. The seeds etc that fall to the floor can be collected and used to boost gateways and poached areas :)
 
If you go to YouTube and type in steksinoly, he's got 2 videos of homemade slow feeders. The first video is Show Grazer Loading, mpg. The second video is Slow Grazer cam. We've just built 2. One is five feet long and the other is 4 feet long. The key component of the feeder is the grid that is placed on top of the hay. It is called gridwall. I purchased mine on ebay. They are all 2 feet wide and they come in lengths of 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 feet. The gridwall stays in place because the actual feeder is a tiny bit larger in width and length than the gridwall. What prevents the grid from being lifted out of the feeder is the top frame (you will see what I mean when you view the videos). The openings of the gridwall are 3 inches square. As the horses (or in my case, my donkeys) pull the hay through the openings, the gridwall drops down as the hay decreases in the feeder. They are the all-time best hay feeders I have ever used. I don't know how I survived for 16 years without them. There is no waste whatsoever!! The donkeys' heads are down and their time munching hay is appreciably increased. We added angle irons to the corners of the feeders and flat irons around the top frame because my lot are wood chewers. We're going to make a couple of six or eight footers for the Shires. I can't recommend them highly enough. There are other variations on the theme on YouTube, which we have tried. The steksinoly one is by far the best.
 
As well as the pallet idea, I remember seeing someone on here post pics of some they'd made from wheelie bins with a hole cut at the bottom, can't remember who it was though sorry. We're on a farm & have an ancient cattle feeder of some description with wide holed mesh to stop hooves going in.
 
I keep my horses next to a roofing wholesaler: they have roof tiles delivered in big wooden crates, i just use those, they arent too heavy for me to move on my own and they burn their excess crates left right and centre! You'd easily fit one on a trailer
 
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