Outdoor Pig Feeders

I just picked up this pair of used outdoor pig feeders for a song.

The old modified Smidley feeder wasn’t quite cutting it anymore.  In it’s defense, the Smidley was a calf creep feeder, so it was not designed with swine in mind. As such, the pigs made a big mess out of eating their feed from it, wasting feed and attracting rodents. Another downside of the Smidley was it’s linear layout, which lead to too much jostling and fighting amongst the pigs as they ate alongside their peers.

Now we can move the feeders around to different paddocks without worrying about spoilage, spillage or any of the rest.  Plus, with it’s new-and-improved circular shape, the pigs don’t fight for space nearly to the extent they did with the Smidley.

These new feeders hold quite a bit of feed, more than I probably care to use at this point.  They have two “rings” which means that they’ll hold about 65 bushels (or 3500#) of feed.  We’re planning on rotating the pigs through different paddocks on a semi-weekly basis, which means that we’ll need the feeders to be empty on a semi-weekly basis.  We can always remove a ring to make a 40 bushel (2400#) feeder if we find that the smaller size works better for us.

And when the galvanized-steel bottom finally rusts out, we can always order up one of the newer fiberglass/plastic bottoms to bolt right on to the top we already have.