Grab some scrap wood, screws and a couple of pallets to get your hay off the ground.
After a couple of months of throwing our sheep’s hay on the ground, we realized that they were pretty picky about getting dry, clean feed. As you can see in the video our pasture is full of hay that no one was eating. So we came up with this idea to get the hay up off the ground with good draining and ventilation.
This little feeder only takes about a couple of hours to build from start to finish. It is basically two old pallets with generous spacing in the slats. You could always cut out some of the boards if you need more room for snouts to reach the hay. Add a couple of scrap boards and a few wood screws and you’ve got all that you need to make this feeder.
I attached the pallets together first, starting at the wide end, then tacking the skinnier bottom together using some scrap 2x4s. I screwed the boards directly into the pallet boards.
After the trough was assembled, I screwed some 2x4s in the shape of an A-frame to the crossbars on the pallet-trough. The last step was to screw the boards across the bottom of the A-frame to give it stability. I actually used an old door frame board.
I also added a scrap piece of plywood to the top of the feeder to keep the rain and snow out. Overall, this has saved us quite a bit of hay money since the sheep tend to eat more out of the trough than they ever did when we were tossing it on the ground.
Sorry, we didn’t get any photos or videos of the building process but thought you might be inspired by the final product. Let us know if you try it and how it works for you.
