Build Your Own Steel Crates, Fences

Build Your Own Steel Crates, Fences HOG EQUIPMENT & IDEAS Hog Equipment & Ideas (351) 10-3-32 Here's one way to beat the high cost of "tooling up" with new facilities for hogs or cattle ù buy the material wholesale and build it yourself. "We think it's the only way to go," says David Unverfehrt, Illinois hog producer who, with his brother-in-law David Droste, is doing a booming sideline business selling solid steel rod to do-it-yourselfers. "Build your own fence lines, farrowing crates, gestation stalls and other facilities with solid steel and you'll never need to replace it again. It doesn't rust out like hollow tubing and doesn't restrict air movement like concrete. And, purchased wholesale, it doesn't cost any more than hollow tubing," Unverfehrt points out. He sells cold rolled, high-tensile solid steel rod direct to do-it-yourself farmer-customers in 25-ft. lengths and in diameters of 5/8, 3/4, 7/8 or 1 in. "In welding the solid steel stock yourself, you have to use a DC welder and low hydrogen rod to prevent the metal from crystalizing. If you don't have a DC welder, you can either rent or buy one," says Unverfehrt. He notes that the cost of enough solid steel rod (7/8-in. dia.) to build a farrowing crate of your own design, plus about 25 ft. of ¢-in. tubing per crate for front and rear gate hinges, would run "about $100 per crate." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Unverfehrt Enterprises, David Unverfehrt, President, Rt. 1, Box 142, Okawville, Ill. 62271 (ph 618 243-6516).

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