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"No Waste" Big Bale Feeder
When Derrill Proctor, Marsden, Sask., Canada, feeds big round bales to his Simmental cow herd, there's almost no waste. The reason is his specifically built bale feeder.
The all-steel, home-made feeder is the exact diameter of a round bale standing on end. Proctor built it out of used grader bales discarded by the county highway department. The center is an old wagon wheel. The uprights are spaced so cows have to reach in for the hay. Any loose hay falls to a plywood platform at feeding level.
As the cows eat, the bale slides down the feeder until it is entirely eaten. The feeder is loaded using a bale spear on a front end loader that will reach the top of the structure.
"It was cheap to make out pf the 35 or 40 old blades," Proctor says, "but the hard steel was difficult to weld and the finished product weighs about 1 1/2 tons. Maybe the same kind of design could be put together with lumber."
Proctor likes it so well that he plans to build another one like it. There's been quite a bit of interest in the bale feeder by other cattle men, but he does not plan to get into commercial production with it.


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1980 - Volume #4, Issue #5