DIY Livestock Feeder

this is an automatic feeder for my goats um if you've seen my channel for a while you know i i used to have a different well it's over here i used to use this system right here and that board up there on the top folds down over the trough and then when it gets dark it releases and opens up if you want to see that i'll link the video in the description the problem with that one is you have to load it every day and so if i'm gone for a weekend or something they don't get fed and they don't have any reason to come into the barn so they're kind of they're not real bright and so uh when at night when the the bell rings to tell them to come in before the door closes and half of them stay outside so i devised a way to get feed to feed them right as the bell goes off it feeds them they come in to get the feed and the door closes behind them have coyotes so if they don't get locked in the burn they can get in so let me pull you in here and show you a little bit about this and then i'll show you building it this is the drive mechanism and i go into more detail on it uh in another video but um it's just a geared motor and then there's a shaft that runs all the way through that's got an auger on it and i have i have footage of making that auger and then this yellow thing just has screws on the end of it and this proximity sensor sees those screws as they go by and counts how many times you want the auger to dump you can see this has four segments because it the auger that goes through it's not really a true auger it's a divided vein and it has four segments so each segment will dump and this is the scoop that i normally use it's a three quart scoop and so when it counts two of these segments have passed by it'll be about one of these scoops so that way you can change it so if you want to get give them you know a certain amount you can increase it or decrease it or whatever it is you know that you want to do i still got to get a housing put around this to protect all of this and let me show you i'll turn it on you'll hear a bell ring because that's how they know to come in all right i'm gonna try that again because i think this over here i think it was pushed back just a little bit so that it registered it almost immediately as one count so it only really did one here we go and there you go i got almost one scoop this one put out a full scoop the rest of this up here is a hopper and i don't have any hinges on this yet but there you can see the feed in there and it's just got about a half a sack in there i can fill it'll hold i think two sacks on both sides which would last oh gosh several weeks all right let's get into the shop and i'll show you how i made it i have a separate video on this trough right here this is my working drawing uh for making the sides the end plates and the one that goes in the middle and so here i had a little disc that i made as my auger representative i've got two circles here because i started out low and i actually liked it a little bit higher because i've got to control the the grain as it comes down in i got to keep it from falling through when this is not turning so i had to make these a little bit tighter here but um just a quick overview so this sits here and then this is the front wall right here will run straight through and then i've got a nailing block here this will finish off the hopper so you got the back side and the front side here and this is just another nailing block here these two are two pieces of oak that run the length and i used oak because this is going to be turning and so there's going to be some wear on this and that opal wear a little bit better little nailing block back here to hold that and then this piece will just screw to the front of the boards that i've got here so now i'm just transferring this i've got some scrap plywood here that i'm going to use to make those sides and so i've transferred this pivot hole right here for the auger right here so i've got to make a hole for the axle to go through and then to hold the bearing this is my bearing that i'm using right here so i've got to make a a hole to let the axle go through and then a recess for this bearing to fit into so i'm going to do that with some forstner bits all right i've got the depth set on my drill press because i want these bearings to stand just a little proud of the plywood so that i can clamp them in place yeah that should be just right and now the hole for the axle to fix the bearings in place i just punched a hole in some knockouts from some electrical boxes and i'm just going to place three of those on each one all right that should hold it firmly in place and the center still turns well so i've kind of got it put together temporarily so let me show you before i get too far let me show you how the drivetrain works so down here we've got a gear motor and it'll have a sprocket on it just like this one and then a chain will drive that this drives this axle which is just some three-quarter inch steel that i put a couple of flats on it and then you got your bearing and i welded that three-quarter inch rod into the conduit that runs down the length of that auger and then to tie the two together now to hold these together so that when the motor turns this one this one will also turn i've got this piece of pipe in here and then i drilled a hole down through here all the way through there and then i'll fix it with a long hardened screw i've got the three i got a mess going on my bench here but i got the three sides here and there and i got the motor mounted there here's the two augers in place right there and the pipe that we were just talking about is in between here and i've got it secured with that screw there and one right there and then it goes through of course goes through the bearings there i wound up putting i cut a piece of pipe i cut a piece of pipe to make a little spacer right there so that these augers can't get too tight up against the sides there's one at each connection there here's the far end right there here's the end with the motor and it runs chain drive to a sprocket there that's attached to the auger and this is a piece that i 3d printed uh just to give an indicator of where the auger blades are right there and then i have a proximity sensor that reads it and i've got a control board over here and i'll do a separate video on how that all works so what i'm working on right now so now i have to enclose this auger so that you know we'll have a a wall that comes like this and then one that comes back like this that kind of makes a hopper before you put the feed in there and then i've got to have some way of metering out the feed and so i've got these two boards made and i've got a little ledge on here and what that does is it kind of closes this off because if i just put a board here when the auger gets when the auger gets in this position feed would just slide down because this wouldn't be there to hold it it would get like that and it would leave a gap and feed would just run down through there so i had to put this little ledge on there and when i bring that into place like this it narrows that gap down so that when this is in that sideways position it keeps grain from running down through there so i've got to get these connected but let me just turn this on for a second and let you see how it runs so these sides i've just got to cut a little piece here and i'll attach that and then i can just screw that in and that'll get these put in place and the one that's on the front side there i'm just going to run a board straight all the way across and then i'll just screw these to that so i'll take a board like this and run it across like that and just screw those into it all right i've got it installed and i've got um all i did was i've got these uh one by one by four one by six oak on the other side there and i just screwed straight into this board on the other side to attach it to the wall and i've got a separate video on how i made this trough but that's how it's mounted here and then i just wire it into i've got a feed room where you know rodents can't get into and that's where everything's wired into where the control panel is so other than getting this closed in i think i'm good to go hope this was interesting to you thank you for watching

Channel: Soat Mon

Views: 7,282

Keywords: stock, feeder, automatic, livestock, goats, sheep, cows, timer, timed, sun down, sun up, dawn, how to, diy, budget

Id: qHO94ISuB1A

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2022