Dad’s pigs require feeding once a day, and if it’s late, they get grumpy in a LOUD way. Since their feeding time is at four in the afternoon, this meant we’d have to plan trips — even just to town — around it.
While the Alaskan Family was visiting, we got tired of only getting half-days for our outings. So my ever-inventive and resourceful Dad and Brother-in-law created the automatic pig feeder!
Every morning, Dad loads up the two shelves with the grain, sugar cane, coconuts, sun hemp and other greens that make up our two pregnant sows’ present diet. These shelves sit over each sows’ pen.
The grey box on the post to the left is a timer-outlet, into which is pulled a rotisserie pole and motor. When the timer turns on — at about 4pm every day — it starts the rotisserie pole turning, which coils up an attached string through a couple pulleys, which draws up the pin keeping the two shelves upright.
It’s a little like a Rube Goldberg machine…
The timer turns off right after the shelves drop. And since the pigs have learned that the sound of the motor means it’s almost feeding time, they hardly make any noise at all these days because these clever girls know exactly when they’re going to get to eat!
And a very happy sow gets to dig through the dropped food to pick out her favorite bits first.
In Which I Experiment with Blogging. 