The Best Hay Feeder for Goats in the World!

I've been away from my Blog entirely too long and hope I have not lost my readers because I do enjoy your comments and am thrilled when I can offer something helpful.  Today is going to be extremely helpful for you goat owners and maybe sheep owners too.

I have found a plan and have built four of these feeders for our goats.  It is the most wonderful, awesome, beautiful hay and grain feeder in the world. Almost 0, yes that is a zero waste of hay. 

In the five plus years I have owned goats there were two, OK maybe three things I totally didn't like.  One,  if you go into a pen with a feed bucket , you are mauled no matter how much they have ate.  They always act like they are one grain from starvation and almost all of my goats have horns so I constantly stayed bruised or scraped.  They don't mean to hurt you....they just think they are starving at all times and a bucket holds the answer to all of their food prayers.  Second is the wasted hay.  I have tried everything for feeding hay but as you goat owners know they waste more than they eat.  We use about 2 bales a day and have paid $5.00 to $7.00 a bale depending on the market.  Everyday all I could see was money laying all over the ground.  A goat will not eat anything dirty.  If one backs up and pees or lets the nanny berries drop, that hay is done for.  The third thing is keeping a herd of 30 goats hooves trimmed but that is even going to get better with time but that is another post.

As my feeders are outside incorporated into the fence line, I built them from all pressure treated wood. If a child is old enough to hold a bucket with grain, they can even feed the goats.

This pen is my older does.  I feed grain in the morning and then fill it with hay.  They reach their little mouths through the panel and pull out a polite little mouthful at a time.   If they do drop a piece it falls into the tray.   I love it!

This pen holds my younger does or the teenagers as I call them.  They actually are one year or close to one year old.

These two feeders were put side by side in the fence line of our buck pen.  We started filling it with hay.

It took the boys about 5 seconds to come running from the woods to munch out on the hay!















Download the plans at Premier1Supplies

I built the single sided feeder which was on page 5.  Although I have purchased from this company in the past, I did not order the panel inserts from Premier.  Instead I bought a panel from the local feed store.  It was 16 feet long and 48 inches tall with 4 inch openings.  Less than $40.00 and Papa Bear cut it into 4 pieces with some heavy duty cutters to make 4 feeders.  All the tools you need is a saw, tape measure, screw gun and screws or hammer and nails and fence staples.  If you are building it alone as I was on the first one you will need a couple of clamps.  I built my first one in a few hours. 

Did I mention I love these things!