This invention relates generally to devices used to store and dispense feed for domesticated animals and particularly such devices for weaning piglets from a sow.
In weaning piglets, farmers to date have either sporadically thrown a few hand fulls of creep, which is granular feed specially formulated for piglets, on the floor of the farrowing crate or pen for the piglets to clean-up. Alternatively, they have placed some feed in prior so-called pig pan or two-hole feeders. Both methods have exhibited inadequacies. Feed thrown on the farrowing crate floor often falls on or is carried into the areas where the piglets wet and dung, dirtying it and rendering the feed uneatable. This results in waste. Feed falling in the sleeping area of the farrowing crate also can be wasted because the extreme odors in a farrowing house quickly contaminate exposed feed rendering otherwise clean feed upalatable. This odor contamination problem becomes accentuated in recently developed feeds that have high milk content and that quickly absorb the foul environmental odors. Wasted feed, for course, adds to the cost of raising pigs for market and should be avoided. Lastely, the sporadic nature of the feeding makes the weaning process haphazard.
Placing feed in a prior pie pan or two-hole feeder keeps the feed off the farrowing crate floor, but often the piglets will wet or dung in the feeder, dirtying and ruining all of the feed contained therein. Further, these feeder devices, by design, expose much of the feed to the ambient atmosphere where it quickly picks up the foul odors present, making it taste bad. Again, the feed becomes wasted.
It is desirable, therefore, to obtain a piglet feeder that contains the feed separate from the environmental odors and dispenses the feed, upon demand, in a manner or to a location from which the piglets can eat without the feed becoming dirty or otherwise contaminated. Such a device also should accommodate the gradual nature of the weaning process in which the demand for feed at first is minimal and increases with time and should also use to advantage gravity-induced flow of feed through the feeder.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,309,090 to Henson discloses a pig feeding device using a control valve for gravity dispensing feed through a closeable opening at the bottom of a hopper. The control valve consists of a hollow outer cylindrical member spaced above and around the opening by legs extending to the bottom wall of the hopper. An inner cylidrical member, connected at its top with a depending control rod extending through the opening and accessible by a pig, opens and closes the space between the outer member and the opening in the bottom wall by telescoping into and out of the outer member. The inner member opens the space upon the pig pushing the control rod upwardly and closes the space by gravity pulling the inner member downwardly. Upward travel of the inner cylindrical member is limited by the height of the outer member and a separate guide rod retains the lower portion of the control rod against lateral movement. This device uses many fabricated parts that must be hand assembled to one another and the hopper, making it expensive, and presents a control valve of substantial weight that may be too heavy to be operated by a piglet.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,651,291 to Duke, in FIGS. 4, 5 and 6, discloses a stock feeder using a rocking valve for gravity dispensing feed from a hopper to a trough. The rocking valve comprises a disk that can be rocked from its seat, which is the top end of a dispensing conduit, by an animal pushing on a large roller mounted on the lower end of an acuating arm. The disk is maintained on its seat by upwardly projecting members, and the upward or backward travel of the lower end of the actuating arm is limited by the large roller striking the lower end of the dispensing conduit. This feeder also uses many fabricated parts that must be hand assembled to one another and the hopper, making it expensive, and dispenses feed into a trough that may be a convenient place for piglets to wet or dung.