Anyone made one of these feeder fillers with a gas leaf blower

[ranchdog]

Has anyone made one of these leaf blower feeder fillers. I have the blower already as part of my lawn gear at home. I can get the rest of the material like the 90's and 3" pipe. But, I don't know how they make the bucket part. I bought a 1200 Boss Buck from Karl at Ultramatic. But I need an easier way to fill than hauling feed up by ladder. I would buy theirs but wow $229 for a bucket! That price does not include the blower, nor does it include the 3" pvc pipe.

http://www.bossbuck.com/products/feeders/pakmule.html

Thanks, Ranchdog

[Bohunter]

No but does not look to hard (bucket part looks like funnle and blower with some 3' pvc to hook blower to.

[Rsatt]

TrailBoss made one. He'll chime in shortly

[trailboss]

Well, there's a little more to it than a bucket. You gotta build a baffle in the down spout to keep it from clogging. No real easy way to explain how to do this. Just trial and error for me, but once I got it right I made several of them and they all work great. They're not the fastest thing in the world, but they sure do save on the back. One word of caution, the 3"PVC will put out some very serious static electricty! It'll knock your socks off, so ground it with a rod or something or you'll wish you had.

Trailboss

[tuthdoc]

I filled mine for almost a year before finally getting smart. It's a pain. I put a gate in my protein pen so I can back my truck up next to it. I then cut one of the x braces out so I could throw the sack up and in instead of having to double lift it. I bought one of the Boss Buck blower things, but have not used it yet. It's not worth it to fill a feeder or two. However, now that we have 10 on the Junco, I'm sure I'll use it there, as well as the Speed Feed that my brother bought. I'm too old to throw 200 sacks up over my head. Also, we have a 2 ton trailer that we've used for corn. Now that protein is getting higher and higher, I'll probably start getting the Palmer Big Rack in Bulk and blow it into the feeders to save money.

[slacker]

This needs to go into the DIY section for sure.

[ranchdog]

Thanks Trailboss,

Great job, I knew there was more to the "bucket" that is what I could not understand what exactly it was.

I agree, we should get one of the mods to move it to there. Trailboss, I may have a few more questions once I get started. And uh, yeah I think I will go the grounding it rout rather than the static "cattle prod" effect!!

Thanks, RD

[Audra]

This is off topic, but I just watched a Mythbuster's episode where they tried to make a 'static cannon' out of PVC. They couldn't do it...maybe you need to show them how, TB!

[JeffJ]

I am really wanting something to save my back! I would love to have a trailer set up deal but i cant se spending $7k+. What does everone think of the "Little Hummer" on the bottom right of this page.

http://www.mummesinc.com/wildlife/products/augers.html

[trailboss]

I am really wanting something to save my back! I would love to have a trailer set up deal but i cant se spending $7k+. What does everone think of the "Little Hummer" on the bottom right of this page.

http://www.mummesinc.com/wildlife/products/augers.html

I've looked at those at TTHA before. Sweet looking set up, but I just couldn't spend the Grand for it.

Trailboss

[tuthdoc]

Yeah, I looked at an auger last year. Heard that they tend to grind up the protein, so I bought the blower instead. We have a trailer that will hold 4000 lbs of corn, so probably 3500ish lbs of protein. We thought about buying a blower unit and retrofitting it to our trailer to save money, but the people wanted about 5000 for the blower. HUH?

With the price of protein going up as the corn filler prices rise, we're probably going to buy bulk in our trailer and use a blower to put it in the feeders. My brothers are in the process of designing something that makes set up quicker and that will remain attached to our trailer.

We played with the blower idea several years ago, but were missing something in design. We could get a bag per minute, but it was a pain to set up and we had a lot of blowback. here's some pics of our trailer and our blower attempts from May,03.







When we have two people, we can "bucket" corn or protein from the top of the trailer faster than we can blow it, but by yourself, you need to blow it.

[Clint]

HCR has a new filler system that works off of vacuum. I bought one at Bowwiz's benefit. It works about as fast as the blowers. The biggest advantage is you can buy bulk corn and load into barrels at the Coop for about half price of bagged corn. Using this system you run a small shop vac off of an inverter and pull a vacuum on the feeder itself. You have another hose from the feeder that you drop into your barrel of corn. No lifting of corn bags at all.

It basically consists of two pvc pipes that you connect to and they run to the top inside of the barrel and end on opposite sides.

A friend on my lease made his own conversion for 6 feeders and filled this weekend. They worked great.

[Big_gun]

Hey TB how fast will the blower you built fill a 55 gal feeder? estimate....

[trailboss]

Never really timed it, but seems to take about 2 min per 50# corn.

Trailboss

[ranchdog]

HCR has a new filler system that works off of vacuum. I bought one at Bowwiz's benefit. It works about as fast as the blowers. The biggest advantage is you can buy bulk corn and load into barrels at the Coop for about half price of bagged corn. Using this system you run a small shop vac off of an inverter and pull a vacuum on the feeder itself. You have another hose from the feeder that you drop into your barrel of corn. No lifting of corn bags at all.

It basically consists of two pvc pipes that you connect to and they run to the top inside of the barrel and end on opposite sides.

A friend on my lease made his own conversion for 6 feeders and filled this weekend. They worked great.

Is this the HCR you are talking about? I don't see it on their website but they need some serious help with webpage design.

http://www.hcrelectronics.com/main.html

Thanks, Ranchdog