As I mentioned in earlier posts, we are planning to be away for 2+ weeks in September. Filling hay bags can be a bit of a chore, so we thought a feed trough might make things easier for our animal care people.
After scratching my head about this for a few weeks, looking on-line at various troughs, looking through a sheep catalogue, etc., Kris from The Dancing Donkey offered some great design suggestions (thank you!) and we built it in a day!
Here is it:
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| Three of the four donkeys took to it right away |
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| We put a length of "non-chewable" PVC pipe along the top and as dividers inside |
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| The trough is 19' long x 20" wide and the existing fence forms the back |
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| Eventually, I hope to turn it into a slow feeder but that will happen later. |
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Dorica doesn't like it much and when she gets there, she body-checks everyone else out of the way. So far I've been keeping barley straw in it and very little hay. First thing in the morning, I'm putting out hay bags though as I think there would be far too much jostling and anxiety around the trough. We'll see if I can slowly acclimatize them to using it!
Here is one more suggestion....put out the normal ration of food and put just a smidge of extra food in the trough. This will put the trough immediately into the realm of "treat" and will go a long way towards making it universally accepted. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteLooks great! What an excellent design :)
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to try it out! I hope Dorica comes around.
ReplyDelete