Someone we knew was cleaning up their old shop/barn and let me go through all the stuff they wanted to dispose of. One of the things heading out the door was a set of bins to store nails and such that the old guy had built. I saw it and thought mineral feeder! I had been wanting to go to the cafeteria style of minerals but was still working on something to hold the mineral. I only had so many old buckets or whatever to use and I needed more. This would be perfect!
And it has been. There have been a few adjustments over time, but not much. I originally had it higher so the girls had to stand on their hind legs to reach it but then I ended up with a boer with a broken leg and she couldn't do that anymore. So I lowered it to just head height for everybody. Now that that doe has passed, I think I may raise it up again. This year I have a bunch of houdini type babies and they have figured out how to jump up and in it, kind of making a mess. While I haven't had that issue before, I'm hoping raising it up again will help that. Probably not, but one can hope! :)
The board on top was a vain attempt to keep the babies off.
Since there weren't quite enough compartments to handle all the minerals, I also used two 6" pvc pipe end caps and the bottom of an old rectangular bucket that had mineral or something of the sort in it.
This was a great find Kat! Absolutely perfect for a cafeteria style mineral feeder.
ReplyDeleteIt was a very timely find! :)
DeleteKat this is awesome!! Thanks for sharing this with us! What a great feeder! Goats are always jumping up on stuff so yeah I could see how that would potentially be a problem. But you’ll figure out how to stop them from doing that.
ReplyDeleteOne option might be not putting them up so high. I find if I have a stepping stool under my feeder for my short doe she doesn’t jump up. But maybe that wouldn’t wk in this situation. Not sure.
Tami
I've got a couple ideas, one along the lines you were thinking. Moving that bench you can see in the first pic will be the first step, though. It just hasn't been a problem til this year. I have one very, um, adventurous doeling who then proceeds to instruct all the others. I've even found her on a small 2x4 support 6' up the wall in a nursery pen. Oh well, that way I don't run out of things to do. ;)
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