Bale Feeders Made From Fuel Tanks

Bale Feeders Made From Fuel Tanks LIVESTOCK Feeding Equipment 28-1-19 By using a plasma cutter to carve up 40-ft. long fuel and water storage tanks, Sam Heitstuman can make a bundle of round bale feeders and two water troughs that his herd of 80 Angus bulls could not destroy. The Clarkston, Washington, man has made 14 feeders so far out of the 5/16-inch-thick metal tanks. "I got tired of using regular round bale feeders because bulls tend to tear them up, so you only get a couple years out of them," Heitstuman says. "The ones I've been making are fantastic because they'll last you a lifetime and save you a lot of money." He says it takes a couple of days to completely transform a 40-ft. tank. Each bale feeder takes about four hours. First, Heitstuman cuts two feet off of each end of a storage tank, yielding two equally indestructible 1,100-gal. water tanks as byproducts. He turns the remaining 36-ft. tube into 6 round bale feeders by slicing it into six equal pieces and cutting a series of 20 by 16-in. access holes around the outside of each piece. "A salvage operation here at Clarkston had all these tanks sitting on their lot," Heitstuman says. "They virtually gave them to me because they had no use for them, and did not want to invest a lot of time and labor to cut them into scrap iron." The ingenious rancher has sold two bale feeders for $500 and $600 each, and plans to sell more, as he continues to make them. "I still have two more tanks to cut up, and should get about 10 more feeders out of them to sell. After that, I plan to find more tanks to work with," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Sam Heitstuman, #255 Clayton Rd., Clarkston, Wash. 99403 (ph 509 758-0115; email: slja@clarkston.com).

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