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Portable Bale Feeders,etc................pics

C

Cal

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Feb 14, 2005
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3,598
Location
Southern SD
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Going to sell a couple potloads of cull cows on Monday. Plan to use these portable bale feeders in a pen when weaning their calves......hopefully they work alright. They were on display at Dakotafest.

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Windy 702 (Bakers LaMar Angus) is this heifer calfs Grandsire

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Just make sure your valve stems are turned to the inside of those tires. We've got a neighbor that has used those, and didn't do that. Came time to move em, and he had a few flat tires, because of cows steppin on em.
 
Portable bale feeders? I was looking at making something that I could set permanently inside my corrals, but this is an even better idea.

I like 'em, I like 'em a lot. :wink:
 
Cal. how long are they? Are there any "V" bars on the inside to hold the hay away from the sides or can the hay press right up against the slanted bars?

Edit: I just took a closer look and can see that there are bars on the inside.
 
My folks have a portable bale feeder (older and rustier) and it is just slick. If you move your creatures that are using it you just hook on and the hay goes too. Simpler then the ole bale rings. The still use the bale rings in the arena and around the barn but that portable one is slick.
 
i could sure test those feeders out for ya, just to make sure they'll do the job :wink: make sure the valve stems are on the inside, and they should do fine. there will probably be more hay on the ground than you will care for, but that seems to be the case with just about all feeders.....at least all of mine. let us know how you like them after you get them broke in. good luck.
 
Thanks all! And that's good advice about the valve stems....will have to check them. The feeders, I think were about 26+ ft long. That old loader tractor in the first picture loading bales, the 4455, it's never actually been pulled hard as in farming, mostly just been on a baler.....but is just a tick away from 15000 hours and still going strong! :) Will probably totally colapse tomorrow since I jinxed it. :shock:

Will try to take a photo of what kind of mess was left after this bunch of calves are turned out.
 
Those look like pretty handy and well built feeders. I worked on a ranch years ago and we had feeders very similar to those. The lesson I learned from them was this: They work well for bulls, but if you park them on the high side of a sloped pen, the bulls will get them rolling. Once rolling they will in fact roll right through a newly constructed plank fence and not even slow down :wink:
 
Justin said:
i could sure test those feeders out for ya, just to make sure they'll do the job :wink: make sure the valve stems are on the inside, and they should do fine. there will probably be more hay on the ground than you will care for, but that seems to be the case with just about all feeders.....at least all of mine. let us know how you like them after you get them broke in. good luck.
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With the one I've been around there is hay wasted but like you said it seems with all of them there is waste.
 
If those are Apache feeders I have two exactly like yours. Mine work great for grass hay and such but tightly packed bales like alfalfa get hung up on the bars and calves especially have a hard time getting tothem. I sometimes have to take the loader and knock the bales over in the feeder so they will fall down and become accessable to the calves again. You will never have to worry about them for cows or bulls though.
 
The reason for too high a level of wastage lies in the design of the inside set of bars.

A neighbor kindly loaned his feeder wagon to me to use through the past winter after we lost our barn and the calves on it wasted remarkably little hay. Quite fine hay, I might add.

There is a manufacturer here in Southern Ontario that builds the best round feeder ever. It has slanted bars on the outside and a fairly tightly spaced conical row of bars forming a basket on the inside.

Feeds about 15-17 cows at a time and results in as close to zero waste as you could hope for. Has a solid floor with the stands completely under the table - no loader contact when scraping yards.

The significantly extra cost is likely easily recouped in the first year of use.
 
I didn't get any more pictures taken of the Apache Feeders, but there was really no waist.....and the calves went right to eating. The two alfalfa bales were too hard, they didn't get much good out of them, but they ate right in to both sides of the millet bales. I then took a Bobcat and pushed the bales over and pulled the hay on the tops down into the void.....but they basically worked real well. Also, sort of broke up the runway in case something would have scared the calves. Hope all the other bunches of calves wean this easy.
 

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