Once the riser blocks are in place, I screw the upright braces to the barrel. You want the feed to just trickle out as the pigs are feeding. The gap should be between 1.5″ and 2″ high. The real key to this feeder is that you need to put riser blocks under the barrel so there’s a gap between the plywood base and bottom of the barrel. I add 2″ x 6″ cross pieces at the corners to keep the feeder area more or less round and prevent feed from getting trapped in the corners. Then I cut a sheet of plywood in half for the base (4′ x 4′) and screw on sides made out of 2″ x 6″ lumber. To build this feeder, I start with a food-grade plastic barrel with a removable top ($40) and then cut the bottom out the barrel with a reciprocating saw. I spend the extra money on deck screws and build everything on the farm with them using a cordless impact screw gun. Black drywall screws are too light for livestock duty: the screws easily snap and the heads twist off. My components of choice are pallets, scrap wood, deck screws, and barrels. I’m a big fan of making things out of easily-obtained, standard components and as little hardware as possible. Lots of spilled feed and repairs later, I set out to build a better feeder. Boo! Feed isn’t cheap and when the feeder was empty, they thought it was a good idea to tip over, throw, and break the feeder to express their displeasure. Night after night I was out there fiddling with the feeder with bleary eyes and a headlamp while the pigs snorted and laughed.Īnother not-so-wonderful trait of that feeder design was the fact that the pigs liked to shovel their feed out of the feeder and onto the dirt. I tried all sorts of modifications, from putting tennis balls on the side of the feeder to dampen the sound, to adding foam under the lid, so it wouldn’t slam when they pulled their head out. They must have really enjoyed that hammer-on-wood sound, because they slammed the lids over and over until I got out of bed and went outside to see what all the racket was about. For instance, the doors were made of wood and my pigs loved to go over to the feeder at midnight, stick their snouts under the lid, and then slam it open against the side of the feeder. I built one of those and found that it had a lot of undesirable traits. I searched around the ag extension office websites on the internet and found plans for one basic type of feeder that I could make out of wood. When I raised my first two pigs, I didn’t want to go down to the farm store and pay $150 or more for a feeder with flimsy metal feed covers and a leaky top. After much trial, error, and bad reviews from my pigs, I have finally come up with a hog feeder design that makes both me and the pigs happy.
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