The present invention is particularly applicable for use in connection with feeding deer and, therefore, will be describe with reference to deer. However, the invention of this application has broader application and can be used to feed a wide variety of animals both wild and domestic.
Owners of animals, and those who raise animals, keep these animals in pens, corrals or cages and the like to contain the animals for extended periods of time. These animals need to be routinely fed to maintain the animals and promote the growth of the animals. These animals can be domestic animals or even wild animals and these animals can be used for a wide range of purposes. As can be appreciated, periodically feeding the animals can be time consuming and expensive if human intervention is needed each time the animals need to be fed. In this respect, animals are conventionally fed at selected intervals, such as morning and evening. As a result, the owners often employ someone to feed their animals and the expense of employing someone to feed the animals twice daily can be substantial.
In addition, it is also desirous to leave the animals unattended in the fenced area for extended periods. As a result, the feeding of the animals is sometimes attempted by merely depositing, in an open container, a supply of feed which should adequately feed the animal during the period of absence. Such practice invites other animals to enter the fenced area and consume the feed. Further, the unattended feed is exposed to the elements and can become contaminated.
It is of course well known that a feeding station can be used to feed multiple animals to allow the animals to be unattended for longer periods of time. The feeding station can have a feed bin or hopper to support a supply of animal feed and can also include multiple outlets or troughs so that more than one animal can feed at one time. Further, it is also known that gravity can be used in connection with a feed flow arrangement to move the feed from the feed hopper to the feed trough.
However, prior art animal feeding devices have been found to be inefficient in controlling the flow of feed and inefficient in feeding many types of animals such as deer. The prior art devices also expose at least some of the feed to the environment. This exposed feed is typically the same feed that the animals are directly feeding from. Further, the prior devices do not employ efficient mechanisms to easily control when the animals can feed and mechanisms to allow the feeder to be easily moved.