dirtdoctor":3kyofkst said:
1982vett":3kyofkst said:
DirtDoctor, try again. The study in Dun's link was done by Michigan State University. It was in a publication by University of Missouri Extension. Here is a link I found to the study refered to in Dun's post.
https://www.msu.edu/~buskirk/Publicatio ... 81-109.pdf
Dang, caught, I just checked the link without re-reading. Now I stand corrected.
Ed
Thanks for the link - I checked it out and the "cradle type" they tested looks nothing at all like the one I use. If you look at photo (d) it has a big bottom structure which keeps the cattle back away from the feeder and they almost have to pull some out to eat it or so it appears.
If you look at my photo above with my cattle eatign a bale it's totally different. They can get into the bale and in fact rarely pull any hay out at all. They just stick their heads in and eat. The study mentioned instances of cattle going over the top rail of the cradle feeder - there is no way they can do that in the Common Sense feeder I use.
They mentioned that one possible cause of the results was that round feeders had less "antagonistic" interaction between cattle eating than did rectangular feeders...
Once mine stick their head in a slot I don't see any antagonistc interaction.... Unless you have a lot of feeders there will always be the dominant ones eating before the less dominant ones but as long as there is enough hay for I don't think waiting for space is a big issue. jmho.
Thanks for the info.