Plastic or steel? Why is either your favorite or least favorite?

Has anyone used Boss Buck 350 and 600 lb free choice feeders? If so.....Likes or dislikes.....How good are they at keeping the tree rats out? I have never used plastic and some folks are telling me they are not squirrel proof...

Any good design options for spin feeders or free choice that are somewhat bear proof. THe bear issue is a growing problem here in OK and its a battle to keep them out....

I like steel. I tried a couple of the popular plastic-barrel ones from Academy and squirrels ate holes in them. I couldn't keep up with the patch jobs so put the mechanisms on metal drums.

I have seen plastic ones deform in really hot weather. If you buy a kit, the legs are not the best quality and bend really easy.
You can not change out to a different type of feeder motor on some of the plastic feeders.

Steel due to the fact that they will last a long time and take nontarget animals abuse. Plastic ones if they are not vented to let the moisture inside of them coming from the feed will sweat and cause you problems. All feed and grains have a moisture content and if animals are not eating much feed or the feed clogs/battery quits then you get condensation. You can even get condesation in a steel feed in high humidity areas if they are not vented well also. To me plastic ones will not last as long as steel ones.

Bossbuck feeders are great quality and will hold up. The free choice are probably the best on the market at keeping moisture off the protein short of going to a mega high dollar one.

The 600 can be filled out of a pickup, the 350, with a little reach can be filled from the ground. If you are looking at the 600's look at the prices if the 1200's and they aren't really that much more and you get twice the capacity.

Full disclosure: I sell Bossbuck products because of the way they keep moisture out. They do not buckle. Most plastics that buckle, including HCRs, buckle because they are not set level or the ground underneath them has turned to mud. If there is feed in them the imbalance can cause buckling or cause the feeder to fall.

Metal! I have bought the plastic but then took the spinners off and put them on 55 gal drums when the plastic split.

i like either steel or galvanized.

i'm sure plastic will hold up but i think they are look cheap

Whatever feeder, plastic or metal, you are looking at try to find a metal one that is welded at the seams and not tack welded. Some feeders come with pop rivets or screws or bolts through them, or they have a sight glass. All of those penetrations will eventually allow water/moisture into your feeder. Not a plug right now; Bossbuck is the only feeder I've seen that has zero penetrations of the body by screws, bolts, or pop rivets. The penetrations are also the exact places where your feeder will start to rust, from the inside out.

Welded metal feeders unless they have an oversized lid on them will sweat and the condensation will eventually ruin your feed and it will cause rust inside the feeder.

On free choice feeders, check the feed spouts. Several brand name metal feeders have large squared openings. I promise you that with a hard rain those openings will clog. In some cases a few mornings of heavy dew or fog have clogged them.

Protein pellets act like a sponge, they will pass water from pellet to pellet. Most people here are familiar with clogs and the stink from the molded protein.

Plug: Bossbuck feed heads won't do that. If you have a horizontal rain, the side facing the rain, may get about 1/8th to 1/4 inch build up behind the lip and it might extend a couple inches into the spout. The difference is that the protein will still flow and your deer will still be able to eat it.

Spin feeders same business on penetrations of the feeder body. Corn will also give off moisture. The feeders need to breathe, get an oversized lid if possible.

Pick one that doesn't have penetrations and you will be way ahead of the game in the long run. Get one with a cone or sloped bottom. Particularily spin feeders, a flat bottom spin feeder will allow corn to build up and if it stays in there long enough you will end up with weevils. From weevils you will end up with powder in the bottom of your feeder. If your feeder also happens to leak, that powder will turn to almost concrete if it doesn't mold first and pollute the rest of your corn.

That's the best advice I can give ya off the top of my head.

I have been running the walmart 99 dollar ones for 5 years now with no problems. Hogs even knocked them down a few times and rolled them around. Not a great feeder, but no complaints from me.

I have ordered 2 Boss Buck feeders. 1 350 spinners and a 600 protein. I like the looks of these feeders and after talking with the factory that had great customer support I decided to go with them....

We will load these up with Pro Antler 20 pellets and see how the deer utilize the new feeders. We know consumption rates from our homemade protein heads. We are also looking for moisture issues and craftsmanship. Lastly I am looking at how well the protein head holds the feed without accidentally spilling feed while the deer is eating.

Next question.....Right now on one lease thats a long way from home I use 2 16 ft cattle panels end to end trying to keep cattle away from our feeders in remote locations. This makes a 30ft "pen". T-posts and wire hold it together. This has not proved to be the most "cattle proof" set-up......
Are there any better options out there....?

electric fence or string barbed wire...we had a water trough in one of our pens and one cow actually bent a panel and was able to get half its body over the pen in order to drink the water. we strung barbed wire the next weekend over that area and it appears to have solved the problem: no additional panel damage and no pictures of him in the action...other than that an electric fence is probably the next option

What are the cows doing? Are they jumping it or are they pushing it down? Some people will recommend puting wire along the top. I think that wire anywhere around deer is a matter of when the deer will get caught in it and not if.

If you are using the 52 or 54" inch tall panels about all I can suggest is extra T posts or consider lifting the panel off the ground 6 to 8" (you aren't gonna keep the coons out anyway) so that the cows won't be able to jump the panel. You will have to cut a few squares out so the deer can make it into the pen easier. If you are not using the 52 or 54" panels you might want to consider switching and use the shorter ones somewhere else.

This is how I did it with some particularily aggressive cows. The wood was just there to hold the panels up while we wired it. We also set the T posts in concrete.





You can see about what I mean with the cutout in the 3rd panel on the right side of this picture. Hope this might help.

Been my experience that when cattle are getting in feed pens it is usually due to poor range conditions or overstocking. Also have seen that when pens are to small it creates cattle problems. The bigger the pen the less problems I have had personally this keeps the feeder farther away from the edge of the pen and the cattle. Cattle will get up against the edge of the pen as they can smell the feed and with numbers of cattle they start to push against each other and the pen will go down. Stocker calves can be the hardest to keep out due to high numbers of them. Some cattle are just pen jumpers and once they get started you can not break them of it. I have seen cattle clear 5' tall pipe pens when they want to. The cut out section of panel pictured above does work also.

I might look at expanding my pens that makes good sense. I will take into consideration the notching of the panels for better access, again another good idea....

All of my problems have occurred from cattle pushing the pen down. I dont think we have ever had a jumper...

I am sure the cattle on this particular piece of property need more feed and I know they need more mineral. If they even get close to the Antler Builder mineral it's over....Gone...eaten up so fast the deer never stand a chance....

If they are pushing the panels down they will use their heads and neck to start bending it. Raise it if you can so they can't get their head over it. Unless you got real long legged cows.

I have used hog panels, framed with 1in square tubing, and conect the panels together with rebar that is driven into the ground. at the end of each panel frame. Weld 3 in piece of round tubing use 2 per side. align them with the next panel and drive rebar into the ground. leave one piece not driven into the ground and remove it for your 16 ft gate to back your atv, truck etc up to your feeders to fill them. this has worked for years keeping cattle and hogs out of my feeder area. and you can make your pen as large as you want in 16 ft sections.

TAW

I build rwmcountry feeders with all welded seams, no tack welds, no spot welds, no bolts, no screws, no rivets and no sight glass. And the lids breathe.
I do have the feed tube bolted so it could be removed for spincast conversion, but the tube extends up thru both lower and upper plates so water will not enter. There are a lot of materials, consumables and labor to build one of these and really the only difference between a small feeder and larger feeder is a little more cost and material. But we have to market to the budget minded consumer. Also I have never had a clog on the one I first built for myself 8 years ago. Yes they all will gum up on the bottom. So now you know of 2 all welded feeders. And this is a plug.