Mineral feeders: why intake problems are usually placement problems

Some links on this page are affiliate links. HornCore earns a commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

Research. We have not had a mineral feeder out through a season yet. What follows is how the designs differ, what weather does to loose mineral, and why placement decides more than the feeder does. When ours has been out a wet summer, this page gets updated with the date.

Most complaints about mineral feeders turn out to be complaints about where the feeder is standing.

What weather does to loose mineral

Loose mineral carries a lot of salt — often as an intake limiter — and salt pulls water out of the air. It does not need rain to fail. A humid week packs the top two inches into a crust the stock stop working at. Rain turns the whole tub into a brick that comes out with a shovel.

Two costs come out of that. The obvious one is the mineral you throw away. An open pan sitting in the weather throws away a meaningful share of every bag, and mineral is not cheap by the bag.

The second is larger and nobody counts it. Intake drops for however many days the crust sits there — stock work the edges and leave the middle — and you do not notice, because the feeder still looks full. You dump it, refill, and consumption spikes on the fresh mineral. A sawtooth instead of a steady line. What the target ought to be belongs to the tag on the bag and to a vet or nutritionist who knows your forage. Whatever it is, a feeder full of brick is not meeting it.

Covered against open

Open pans and tubs. Cheap, light, easy to fill and scrub. The right answer under a roof you already have: in a shed, on a covered pad, under the barn overhang. Out in a field they are a rain gauge.

Hooded and lidded feeders. A roof over the opening. Look at where the sides stop: plenty sold as covered keep vertical rain off and nothing else, and driven rain arrives sideways.

Weathervane feeders. Post-mounted so the whole unit swings and the opening faces away from the wind. In open ground it is usually the design worth the extra money, and it works only as long as the bearing turns. Grit gets in, the collar rusts to the post, and you own a hooded feeder pointing the wrong way. Look for a greaseable spindle, and plan to actually grease it.

Capacity is the wrong number to shop on

Feeders are advertised by how much they hold. A large feeder held full is a large volume of mineral standing in weather for a long time.

Size it to how fast your stock go through it and refill smaller amounts more often. On a small place that is a smaller feeder than the listings push. Filling it once a quarter is not the goal. Filling it and having it eaten is.

Wind, stock, and staying upright

An empty plastic tub weighs almost nothing. The first storm puts it in the fence line.

• Post-mounted. Bolted to a driven post. Solid, and it stops being portable. Use a wood post set properly rather than a t-post — a t-post leans under a year of cattle rubbing, and there is a separate piece on which post goes where.
• Weighted or skid base. Moves with a tractor.
• Tire or sled base. Works, ugly, close to free.

Cattle rub on anything that stands still, and anything with horns will get under a hood and turn it over.

The mounting hardware is not in the price. Post, bolts, a driver or an auger, an hour of your time. Budget it alongside the feeder.

Placement is the intake control

Distance from water is the main dial. Stock take more when it sits near where they drink and loaf, less when it is out at the far corner. Running high, move it further from water. Running low, move it closer. Change one thing, then leave it two weeks before judging — intake wanders on its own with forage and weather.

The rest costs nothing:

• Put it where they already stand. Shade, gates, the loafing spot. Not where you wish they would go.
• Not in the low ground. Runoff finds it.
• Not in the gateway, unless you want that gateway churned.
• One station per group at minimum. A single feeder in a big paddock means the boss cattle decide who gets it.

If intake is wrong, look at the map before you look at the catalog.

What we are putting out

No feeder is standing out here yet, and no post is driven for one. Where it will stand is the question still open, and the article settles what follows from the answer. Under a roof we already have, an open pan is enough. Out in open grass it is a hooded or a weathervane unit, and something to keep it upright. Buying one changes this section and nothing else. It will name the feeder, covered or open, its capacity, what it cost with the post and the mounting hardware, where we set it relative to the water, and the date. The rest is not on a receipt. Whether the cover kept driven rain out, and what intake did when we moved it, take a season to see, and a single move takes two weeks before it means anything. The Research line at the top stands until this one has been out through a wet summer.

Before you buy

• Decide covered or open by whether it will live under a roof. That question settles most of the choice.
• Put the post and the mounting hardware in the same order as the feeder.
• Buy for how fast it empties, not for how much it holds.

— Chris D., McEwen, Tennessee