Free Choice Mineral Feeder

well now that the cows are here it's time to build something is going to be a mineral feeder if you're not familiar with mineral feeders cows eat a whole bunch of stuff on the field and generally speaking what they're eating is going to be deficient in something you know sulfur salt potassium any number of different things and so what we're going to do is try to build a mineral feeder we're going to try to make a 20 compartment two foot by six foot long mineral feeder and then we'll get minerals we can put them in there and the idea is that the cows can go in and just you know lick whatever minerals they happen to feel that they want which is typically whatever they're deficient in this is also supposed to be good for the field in the long term because whatever the field is deficient in in theory the cows go and they eat out of the mineral feeder and then a good amount of whatever they eat out of the mineral feeder ends up going out the back end of them back onto the field and hopefully you know putting said mineral out onto the field and hopefully helping to rejuvenate the field as well that's all fine and good but either way it's supposed to be better for the cows and we wanted to start mineral program for houses as soon as we could so we're going to get our mineral feeder built that's what this wood behind me is we're going to take these long pieces get them cut down to six feet long see if we get them cut down to about six feet long and then we'll cut the end pieces for them and then we're going to start putting it together we got our pieces of plywood here that we're going to use for dividers inside the mineral feeder and I'm going to probably use a router and make slots in the longer pieces just so that I can slide those dividers in and out if I decide I want to make you know one bigger spot or you know not have as many divisions or something like that so that's what we're going to try to do I don't have a very detailed plan for this so there's going to be a little bit of winging in here but let's get started cutting wood foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] so here's our six foot long pieces of wood we're going to go down and mark them so that we can Notch them we're going to notch them with the router we've got a half inch bit in here the pieces of plywood we're going to use for dividers are 15 30 seconds so they should hopefully fit nicely into a half inch slot we're gonna make that slot about 5 8 of an inch deep so we want to leave plenty of strength left in the wood we're using two by eights and two by tens which I know might seem a little bit big but I want these compartments to be plenty deep so that we can put enough mineral in them and have it down a bit so that it's out of you know wind and rain and anything like that we are going to have a cover over it in the end and we'll get to that when we get to the end of it but we want to make 10 compartments on each side so that means we're going to do slots and we want those slots to be about every seven and a little less than a three-quarter inches centered going down the six foot board six foot board is 72 inches so 10 compartments on a 72 inch board puts you at about 7.2 2 which is again a little less than seven and a quarter so we're gonna make our marks and then we'll see about getting going with our router all right so now we have our marks where we want our notches to go but as you'll notice of course the router yeah that's not on one Edge so in order to line it up I'm not going to try to do these notches freehand because I'm just not that steady so what we're going to do we're going to measure from about the center of that bit to the outside edge of this router and that measurement comes out to let's see just about two and a sixteenth yeah about two and a sixteenth inches so what we're going to do then is we're going to put this 2 and 16 inches over from this line from all of these lines on the board so that when we run this router down we can just put this on a line and just run the writer run the router I should say right down along that line right against it and use it as a guide so let's get those marks put in foreign [Music] [Applause] Okay so we've got all our marks put in just lining up the router here as a test and we'll see that yeah that lines up pretty decently so let's um let's give it a shot all right foreign [Music] but we got a nice deep Groove out of it and that's I think going to be plenty good enough for what we need so now I just have to do let's see eight more of them on this board and then nine more on all the others so um yeah we'll be back in a bit once we finish that [Music] wow it really does not look nice well that was fun it's always great when you hit a knot right in the middle of cutting one and it makes the router fly around so yeah that was we'll try not to have that happen again foreign [Music] work and I'm really hoping I don't ever have to do that again anytime soon but this is what we're going for so we got our two by tens in the middle two by Eights on the outside you may ask why did I double up the 2x10 in the middle and the reason for that is simple because I want to cut that Groove and I want them to be opposite each other if I had used just one piece the groove would have nearly gone all the way through the wood and you'd have either no strength left or no wood left so by doubling up the middle you don't have that problem you'll also notice the middle is higher because these are two by tens and these are two by eights and that's intentional because we want to have a flap that goes over the top of this and we want the middle higher and the outside is lower so that flap kind of hangs in such a way that hopefully the rain drains off of it so we're going to get this put together get these two pieces put together get the rest of the frames screwed together and then we're going to try to get the pieces of plywood behind me on for the bottom and once we get the bottom on we'll start trying to cut the partitions so let's get putting these together [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] there we go we got it put together and it is heavy let me tell you I mean I can lift it but yeah it's heavy and it's supposed to be you know cows are going to be bumping into it and stuff so it's good enough so we're going to flip it over we're going to get the plywood put across the bottom and then we'll start thinking about cutting our partitions [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so we got our bottom in so we're going to cut our partitions so to make our partitions we're going to use Plywood And same plywood actually that we used for the bottom and we're going to cut it to this width here and then we're actually going to make it as high as the higher side and then we'll cut an angle on it because we want that angle to kind of support the flap that's going to go over the top so that the flap doesn't you know drop too quickly or you know anything like that so we're going to make that angle here with the partitions and it means a little more cutting but shouldn't be too bad we'll get it done so let's get cutting [Music] [Music] well there we go we got our first two partitions done not bad pretty easy to make they come out and they go back in which is what we want want them to slide in and out and they keep that nice slope that we want there so that's good too so yeah that's two done and I only have to make okay four six seven and um yeah let's see math in my head not a pretty picture 16 more so off I go okay well I'm pretty happy with that um we got our dividers in they move I can pull them out if I need to so that's good enough I think we're we're gonna go with that so now the next thing I'm going to try to do is fit the mat to the top of it the mat is going to be a piece of it's not real real thick stuff so I'm going to try it if it works great if it doesn't then I'll get a thicker mat and replace it but we're gonna give it a shot so I'm gonna get that mat out get it bolted down get it cut because it's a little bit bigger than this is and then we'll go from there foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] I think it's pretty reasonable feels pretty on there we used screws with a bunch of washers around it so that it hopefully won't pull out as easily but we'll see how well this mat works if there's any part of this that I'm worried about it's this mat because it's not super strong but we'll see how well it works so what I do want to do to this still is get it up a little bit off the ground I don't really want the wood sitting on the ground I didn't use pressure treated lumber don't really like pressure treated lumber against anything that the cows are going to be eating and generally speaking organic certifications don't like it either so because I didn't use pressure treated lumber of course that means that any wood that is in direct contact with the ground termites are going to love not that they won't crawl up stuff to get to Wood they will but it may slow them down a little bit so what we're going to do to get it up off the ground is use this had an extra piece of four inch PVC pipe laying around just going to cut this in half that's going to give me about two two foot long pieces and we're going to put those at either end so that will be up off the ground and that's plenty of room when we're out at the farm if we want to move it around we can just take the tractor and the Bale fork and pick it up that'll be fine so we'll get this cut see if we can get it fastened to the bottom side and call this thing done [Music] foreign well that's our mineral feeder so it feels pretty stable you know we'll see how well the pipe holds up for the ends maybe it does maybe it doesn't if it doesn't I'll put something else under there and as far as this flap like I said we'll see the idea behind this is that the cow comes in they can kind of stick their nose under here they can sniff and then they can put their head under and you know go for it and get something and we'll see I think we're gonna we're gonna put this up by the camera once we put some minerals in it so we can see how well they use it if they use it at all hopefully they do and we'll get there so I had a little bit of cleanup to do but that's the end of this project as far as building it and we'll take our next video when we get it out on the out on the farm and actually get some minerals in it and we'll see how it goes so anyway until next time we'll see you soon

Channel: Sandbox Ranch

Views: 1,998

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Id: wZejYcOIE-U

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023