Favorite Mineral Feeder?

I'm looking for suggestions on an easily portable mineral feeder that I can move from paddock to paddock. My current feeder is easy enough to toss in the back of the truck after my animals go to a new salad bar but it doesn't do so great keeping the elements out. I've used a larger feeder on skids before but I wasn't a huge fan of that. If it was wet it tended to make a mess.

I'm not opposed to buying something but would love any feeders that can be cobbled together from any of the random bits of whatnot I have lying around.

Thanks!

We are dry enough here that the ranchers mostly just set the mineral blocks out on a board. The other common answer is to use roughly 30 to 55 gallon plastic barrel. Cut it about 6 inches up from the bottom about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way around.(usually they turn the barrel upside down so the bottom without any holes is the top and the bungs are on the bottom) Stop drill each end of your kerf with about 1/2 inch hole or bigger to prevent future cracking. Gently heat the area just above the kerf till you can fold it in and back to the other side of the barrel. Add 1 bolt with fender washers to keep it held back(smooth end of the bolt inside so there is nothing for the animal to snag. This has left a smooth hole with very little an animal can snag on. Drop the mineral block inside and then places on a stand so the block is about belly high on the animal. Turn the barrel so the opening faces away from your normal prevailing wind direction. One of the common stands is 3 or 4 tires stacked and bolted together. The lower tires are then filled with concrete to provide a hard to tip over base. Bottom tire is usually a truck tire and they taper down in size as the stack goes up. The common blue barrels will only take about 5 years of sun and animal abuse before they shatter.

Opps hit post to fast.

One other one I have seen amounted to a tire swing. It was fairly wide and large tire. They simply put the block inside the tire and hung the whole thing off a large tree branch. Be sure you pick a sturdy tree as this can become a cow toy.

Single block, a few types of loose mineral, or a whole salad bar free choice system?

I use a loose mineral. I've used something like this before but it was really heavy and needed to be dragged with a truck:

http://lhmfg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LowProfileMineralFeeder.jpg

Portability is what I'm most interested in.

Mount it on a small trailer then?

http://www.cattletoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=72426&start=15

Scroll down half way. I have one of these. The top tire is a super single from a semi trailer, bottom is an old pick up tire. I have mud flaps split and hung on both sides of mine to keep water/snow minimized.

Stephen Dobek wrote:I use a loose mineral. I've used something like this before but it was really heavy and needed to be dragged with a truck:

http://lhmfg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LowProfileMineralFeeder.jpg

Portability is what I'm most interested in.

I've seen this type of mineral feeder attached to a pallet with the runners cut for skids....it seemed like the guy was able to pull it around his pasture by hand pretty easily, or you could use a quad or something.

There is a balance, too heavy and you can't move it by hand but too light and you need to refill it too often and the cattle push it around/over. I could probably scrap something together for a couple cows using an old garden wagon, but you need too much mineral to be man moveable for more animals than that.

And there is no great answer for wet conditions other than move it daily or invest in a load of rock to make a raised pad for it near the water.

I use the standard free choice enterprises skid feeder with rubber flap lid. It is heavy before you fill it, plus it will hold 800 lbs of mineral.

I want to build an all-in-one trailer. IBC tote for water (and weight to keep it from blowing away in the wind) with multiple waterers to reduce fighting, solar fencer and rotational fence storage, mineral feeder and bulk storage, and a big fold out shade structure. It would need a tractor or pickup to move it, but if you pie slice your paddocks from it, you should only have to move it once a week or less. The tote would have a float valve so you can slow fill it from a permanent or temporary line through the pasture that could be run daytime only from a small solar pump dropped in a nearby pond.