These grain troughs are 30 feet long, made out of 0.125 wall by 2 inch pipe. Are chained together so that they do not move apart from each other. We move them with a front end loader, for longer distances we put them on a 32 foot flat deck trailer. Two strong people could load them too. When they are all tied together the cattle do not move them around, so they stay nicely lined up and makes it easy to put the grain into them with our truck mounted chop box. We were able to build these 30 feet long troughs for the price that we would have paid for a 10 foot long boughten trough. Our troughs are stronger then the bought ones and a third of the price. These troughs have been used for 4 years. They were made for feeding grain, if one were to feed silage or hay in them they are not deep enough and the cattle waste too much.
Here we have used our silage bunks for in fence line feeding, we have removed the pipe that ran down the top center of the bunk, which was ment for use out in the feild, the pipe would keep animals from being pushed into the trough or jumping over it. Each trough is 32 feet long (two 16 foot long 2 by 8" boards). We have a wooden floor in it, made of 4, 2 by 8" boards, this raises the floor of the manger so the animals don't have to reach all the way to the ground. The bunks hold a large amount of feed and we find that the animals waste less feed because they can not root around in the feed, pushing it out of the trough and on the ground. In the past when we moved them around, we used a front end loader and a 32 foot trailer, they stack nicely.
We have found that we needed a little more room for the feed in the bunks when we feed the cattle in the winter out in the feild, so this is what we built recently (2008 and 2010).
Here is a material list:
Cross member 2 7/8 pipe 43 1/4 inches by 6
pieces
Upright
2 7/8 pipe 18 inches
by 6 pieces
Long
2 7/8 pipe 33
feet by 4 pieces
Flat
2 inch by 1/4 inch 19 inches by 12 pieces
Flat end pieces 2 inch by 1/4 inch 10 inches by 4 pieces
Last Updated7 Oct. 2010
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