Top 4 types of sheep feeders, sizes and how to make them yourself

In summer, flocks of sheep graze in meadows and clearings, where lush herbs reign. In the fall and winter season, it is the turn to feed small livestock with stored hay, silage, feed, root vegetables and grain crops. To ensure that food is dosed and comfortable, summer residents install feeders for sheep. There are several types and designs of fixtures.

Description and types of feeders for sheep

According to the installation method, devices are divided into 3 types. This:

1. Capital structures. They are installed in a designated area of ​​the sheepfold or in a pasture.The superstructure of the stationary feeder is rigidly attached to the base.
2. Mobile devices. They are used to feed flocks that have been driven to distant grazing. There, cattle are regularly moved from one place to another. Portable structures can be quickly dismantled and transported behind the herd.
3. Universal devices. They combine the parameters of stationary and portable feeders. They can be securely attached to the floors of sheepfolds or grazing soil. When moving the flock to the next place or to a new room, the structure is dismantled and moved behind the animals.

The structure of the feeder depends on the type of food used. There are two types of devices:

• nurseries, playpens, reptiles for fresh and dry grass (hay);
• containers, bunkers for grain, silage (chopped succulent vegetation), melons and root crops.

Materials for making feeders:

• plastic;
• concrete gutters;
• boards, wooden beams;
• bricks;
• sheet, profiled and pipe metal.

Types of feeders:

Where can I buy a ready-made version?

It is difficult to purchase ready-made feeders for sheep and rams in online stores. There aren't many options there. Thus, some farming portals (for example, Agroserver) sell hanging plastic bins equipped with a 0.33x0.28 m lid. However, a quick inspection is enough to understand that they are unreliable and fragile.

A good option is to buy a feeder or reptukh (a mesh bag made of canvas or rope) at a farm store for less money. The selection is small, but products can be returned or exchanged.

How to make a feeder with your own hands

Now there is a shortage of high-quality ready-made feeders. Therefore, the best option is to do it yourself.

Wooden

For a lumber feeder you will need:

The simplest version of a manger for hay made from lumber:

	4 bars with a length of 1.25 m and a cross-section of 6x6 cm are sawn off. They are knocked together in pairs crosswise. The resulting racks look like the letter X.
	The supports are placed vertically on two ends and opposite each other. On both sides of the center of the crosses, crossbars are screwed with self-tapping screws. The material for them is bars 2 m long and 5 × 5 cm in cross section.
	The same jumpers, which give rigidity to the structure, are screwed onto the top of the supports.
	For the sheathing, slats with a length of 60 cm and a cross-section of 4×4 are taken. They are nailed vertically to the upper and lower lintels, in increments of 0.25 m.

Manezhnaya

Some farmers and summer residents use a witty life hack. They use a playpen made of wood, plastic, and aluminum as a feeding trough. It rises 50 cm above the ground or floor of the sheepfold. When the sheathing of a wooden arena is too frequent, every second lath is dismantled. In this case, the sheep will be able to freely stick their heads to the feed.

If there is no old playpen, its likeness can be knocked down from lumber or welded from pipes.

Bunker

The bunker is a stationary feeder with an inclined platform.It makes it possible to give the animals a certain amount of nutrition on a weekly basis. The structure is hung on one of the walls of the sheepfold. It plays the role of the rear wall of the structure. The facade of the device is lattice. Its slats are mounted at intervals slightly larger than the size of an adult sheep's head.

A wooden or metal ramp is placed in the interior of the feeder. The food will slide along it towards the crate.

How to make a combined feeder:

Metal

To install a metal nursery, you need 2 sections of a tubular picket fence. These blanks are welded to each other at an angle of 90º using electric welding. The resulting letter V is placed with its base on a large steel trough. Then it is attached to it in several places by welding.

The resulting device is durable, practical and very effective when feeding sheep with dry and fresh herbs.

The only drawback of the design is that it is made from relatively expensive material.

Salt feeders

A trough-shaped device for silage, grain, and salt is made from supporting vertical bars. A bottom of boards, sheathing or walls and a groove are nailed to them. The gaps between the fencing slats are 0.1 m. The slats are installed with an internal slope.

The depth of the groove is 0.12 m, the width at the top is 0.15 m, at the bottom it is 0.13. To prevent sheep from scattering loose feed and salt, slats are nailed into the upper part of the trough at intervals of 25 cm.

Making a drinking bowl

Sheep need not only food, but also water. Therefore, they need to be watered periodically. The simplest device for this is:

	Several old truck tires are taken and cut lengthwise and in half with an electric jigsaw.
	Smaller-diameter tires from passenger cars are inserted into the holes in the ramps. This is done half their width. Before this, you need to select products that are suitable for the cross-section.
	Both structural elements are pierced in several places with an awl and screwed to each other with pieces of wire.
	The resulting drinking bowls are placed around the sheepfold and filled with water.

Plastic bottles equipped with a teat nipple on the neck are ideal for watering lambs. They can be found at any pet store.

To give water to all the babies at the same time, you can take a narrow trough-shaped feeder and make round holes in both its walls. Insert bottles into them and secure them. This way you can not only water lambs, but also feed milk to very small animals.

How to make a drinker:

Farmers' mistakes

Inexperienced summer residents and farmers make a number of mistakes when feeding and watering small livestock. Here are the most common ones:

1. There are no drinking bowls near the feeders. Some livestock breeders are convinced that in winter there is no need to provide livestock with moisture, because they eat snow. This is the wrong approach. Water frozen and purified in this way contains very few microelements needed by sheep.
2. There is no drainage near the drinking bowls. Liquid spills from them, and sometimes the sheep even turn the equipment over. The soil floors of a sheepfold cannot absorb moisture fully. They form slush, which the sheep mix with their feces. This liquid mud is an ideal environment for pathogens and putrefactive microorganisms.
3. The feeders are not properly maintained. A lot of stuck food remains in dirty equipment. It begins to decompose and harmful microbes appear in it. This causes animals to have digestive problems or start to get sick.