"We used to use round bale feeders but the cattle would throw hay out of them, wasting a lot of feed. We started looking at using some sort of concrete feeder but they were expensive and hard to clean," says Ed Walder, Wittenberg, Wis.

"Finally we thought of this idea and I can't imagine a better way to feed cattle. The idea consists simply of two electric lines spaced about 4 ft. apart and positioned 3 1/2 ft. high. We dump feed in the middle. If cattle start pushing the feed around, it just gets pushed over to the cow on the other side. So there's virtually no waste.

"Clean-up is easy with a skid steer loader and you can set this up anywhere -- in a feed-lot on a concrete pad or out on pasture. We already had a fence charger."