If you have had sheep or goats for any length of time, then you know a good hay feeder is essential. If you are new to sheep, you’ll quickly see what we mean. These animals are extremely wasteful of their hay if it is placed on the ground where they will stand or poop on it. Additionally, due to parasite concerns sheep should not be fed on the ground. Unfortunately, a good ‘no waste’ hay feeder is hard to come by. You might have tried half a dozen things already and none of them worked very well. So today, we are going to discuss hay feeders for sheep, and the key components we have found essential to keeping waste down.
As you might already know, there is a wide variety of hay feeders out there both DIY and purchasable at many price points. But trial and error is an expensive way to find something that works. Fortunately, we have tried various things and have some insight for you. Before we get started though, how much hay waste you will have partially depends on the quality of your hay. If you feed very coarse low quality hay, they will waste a lot of it regardless of feeder design. Top quality, fine textured hay will result in the least waste.
A good hay feeder for sheep needs 4 main components.
First, it needs a rack with small holes so that they cannot pull large quantities of hay through the feeder all at once. It needs to be a ‘slow feeder’ as they are called in the horse world. Small holes only allow the animals to pull mouthfuls of hay through. If they can pull huge chunks of hay through the feeder, they will drop most of it on the ground.
What we have been using with good success is 2 x 4 welded wire fencing. We have found that this size hole works pretty well. Plus, the fencing is inexpensive, readily available and holds up well. Keep in mind though, it is not self-supporting, so needs to be attached to a sturdy frame.
Secondly, the sides have to be tall enough or it has to be covered so that they cannot get inside of it.
This is pretty self explanatory. You don’t want them standing on top of the hay pooping and peeing on it while they are eating. This can be a particular challenge with goats, and you might have to get creative. If your feeder is situated outside this is the perfect reason to put a roof on it. If you are making a feeder in a barn, it might be easiest to build it off an existing wall to make it less appealing to jump up into.
Thirdly, it needs a tray underneath it to catch what they drop so that they can’t step on it.
No matter what feeder you use, they will pull hay through and drop some of it as they are eating. If this hay falls on the ground it will be trampled and wasted. If it falls into a shallow tray the sheep will eat a lot of it. Alternatively, you can scoop it out and toss it back into the top of the feeder.
We haven’t settled on the perfect solution for this. However, 55 gallon barrels cut in half can make a simple, inexpensive trough. We are currently using 1×2 welded wire because we had it laying around. It does allow some hay to fall through onto the ground, but it doesn’t get filled with water when the drain holes get plugged in a deluge.
Please note here, that the feeders in many of our pictures have a trough much, much deeper than necessary. It is actually too deep to work well because the sheep have trouble reaching the bottom. A shallow 6” trough is deep enough. Keep in mind the trough should be high enough off the ground to discourage the sheep from standing in it.
And lastly, probably one of the most important components and also, the component most often missing: slats. Though they may seem unnecessary and not blatantly obvious what purpose they serve, they are the key to keeping hay off the ground.
Fourth – Your feeder needs to have diagonal slats.
If you have ever heard of a keyhole feeder, then you probably know the idea behind them is that they ‘lock’ the animals head into the feeder while they are eating. The drawback is that they can be very dangerous because the animals cannot see what is coming or back out of the feeder quickly. The slats on our feeder serve a similar purpose, but are a little bit safer because the animals can still see out of the feeder.
The diagonal slats serve a couple purposes in preventing feed loss. They keep the sheep from turning their heads outside of the feeder while eating. This means they aren’t dropping hay everywhere. It also reduces jostling around and switching places at the feeder because it is inconvenient to do so. This reduces their tendency to drag hay all over as they continually switch places looking for the best morsels.
Keep in mind, the slats need to be installed diagonally. This forces the sheep to stand at an angle to the feeder to eat if they don’t want to stand with their heads turned. Standing diagonally makes it harder for them to rip big chunks of hay out throwing it out of the feeder in the process. To do so would require turning their heads at a very awkward angle.
How far apart to make the slots depends on the size of the sheep. They should be able to comfortably fit their heads through the holes without bashing the sides of their faces, but not be so wide as to defeat their purpose. For our Katahdins, the holes are about 8” wide. We would recommend measuring the heads of some of your sheep. Then add a couple inches to the largest head size.
We realize feeders like this are not particularly portable.
So when we need to use something portable, we have found that horse slow feeder hay bags work okay. They don’t reduce waste as much as a feeder, but they are far superior to throwing hay on the ground. They can be hung from a tree, a stake, or most any other sturdy object. We find these are perfect for supplementing droughty summer pastures when the sheep are moving regularly. Hay bags also allow us to easily temporarily feed our sheep in the shade during extremely hot weather.
One last thing we should note, is that all of our sheep are polled. If you have horned sheep or goats, you should be extremely careful when designing and making feeders. It is probably not a good idea to use hay bags or anything that they can get their horns caught on due to the risk of injury.
We hope that this article helps you to save money by reducing hay waste. If you would like to learn how to build one of these feeders, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter! In the future, we will be showing you how to build a feeder similar to the one pictured in this article.
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