Cow question

[Shake1]

Unless your feeders are sitting on rocky surfaces, pens are fairly easy to setup. This will be your best solution. I've had several feeders get trashed by cattle in the past, and they were staked down with rebar / t-posts when it happened. Lost all the corn, had to repair the feeders / replace barrels, and not to mention - the time lost due to the feeders not working in the field while I was not there (weeks at a time).

[Dale Moser]

Whichever one is closest to water will have most of the issues.

[ZZ Pops]

Requires 4 steel post, 80 ft of barbed wire, and 4 20 ft sucarods. Drive the t post in a square around the feeder 20 ft apart. Weld the sucarods to the top of the post making a square. Then tie one barbed wire about belt buckle high from one t post to the next. Deer crawl under and cows can't. Works great. It's better to have 2 wires but one will work.

I watched a 250# calf push its way through barbed wire strands. So, this sometimes works, sometimes not. Depends on how hungry the cows are.

They seem to have a hard time picking corn up off the ground. They will lick it off the spinner if you don't have a cage around it. And like DXT said stake it down or they may knock it over.

I used to believe this, but have watched cows pick up corn with no problem. They do, however, tend to go to where the corn is close together, like directly under the feeder.

Raise your feeder barrel high enough off the ground that they cannot lick the plate and empty the barrel. Stake the legs of the feeder tripod down so when and if they rub against it they will not turn it over. It is hard for cows to pick individual corn kernels off the ground. When I raised all my feeders way up, my cows ahnging around the feeder stopped. Also stopped a lot of my coon problem.

Cows cannot reach my spinner but this does not stop them from congregating when the dinner bell rings! I've had a LOT of hunts ruined by cows!

build a pen!!! they will eat corn and you will hate nothing more then to have cows standing under it when it gets light in morning. Do the building mid-day!!!

Man! I can relate to that!!!

At a minimum, you need to stake the feeder legs with T-posts. If possible, set your spinner to throw as far and wide as possible to avoid corn stackin up in one place. This won't necessarily stop the cows from coming around, but they will not spend a lot of time trying to pick up individual kernals. Best of luck to you.

Also, if you find a solution, please share it. I've been fighting this for years.

[Skinny]

Spend about 3 hours building a feed pen out of T-posts and cattle panels. Build it at least a 20' circle around your feeder. That will keep the cows out, unless they are starving.

Good luck.




Skinny

[Coach W]

Spend about 3 hours building a feed pen out of T-posts and cattle panels. Build it at least a 20' circle around your feeder. That will keep the cows out, unless they are starving.

Good luck.




Skinny

This... even if you olnly use 2 panels a side (8 total) You will be happy you did!

I have pictures of 10 or more cows all piled under the feeder trying to eat the corn as the feeder spins... Cows are the WORST!!

[2010bigdog]

You've got to enclose it somehow or those hungry cows will get the corn and rub on the feeder legs tearing up your setup. Seen it too many times. bigrack made the fastest and cheapest suggestion. The only other option I know is to hang the feeder from a tree limb but the cows still get the corn!