6 Best Portable Feed Bins for Livestock
Efficient rotational grazing requires mobile solutions. We review the 6 best portable feed bins designed to minimize waste and move easily with your herd.
You’ve just spent an hour moving your fence line to give your animals a fresh paddock, but now you’re staring at the half-full, 200-pound feed bin stuck in the mud back where they used to be. The core principle of rotational grazing is moving the livestock, but we often forget that their infrastructure needs to move with them. The right portable feeder makes this daily dance smoother, saves you money on wasted feed, and keeps your system running efficiently.
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Why Portable Feeders Are Key for Grazing
Moving animals to fresh pasture is the easy part to understand. The hard part is managing the gear that supports them. A stationary feeder in a rotational system creates a sacrifice area, where hoof traffic and manure concentrate, damaging the very soil you’re trying to build.
A feeder that moves with the herd distributes that impact across the entire pasture. This prevents compaction in one spot and spreads the nutrient load from manure and urine more evenly. More importantly, it keeps the animals grazing where you want them, rather than encouraging them to trek back to a fixed point for a snack. This simple change improves both pasture health and animal behavior.
Feed waste is another huge factor. A feeder left in one place is exposed to the elements day after day, turning expensive grain or mineral into a soggy, unpalatable mess. Portable feeders can be moved to higher ground in wet weather or positioned to take advantage of natural shelter, drastically cutting down on spoilage and ensuring your investment actually goes into your animals.
Tarter Creep Feeder for Calves and Lambs
When you’re raising young animals alongside their mothers, providing supplemental feed just for them is a challenge. A creep feeder is the solution. It uses an adjustable gate or entryway that’s large enough for calves or lambs to enter but too small for the adult cows or ewes.
The Tarter Creep Feeder is a classic for a reason. It’s built on skids, making it relatively easy to drag from one paddock to the next with a small tractor or ATV. This design allows you to give your youngest stock a nutritional boost for better growth rates without wasting expensive feed on the mature animals who get what they need from pasture.
The main tradeoff is its size and weight. While portable, it’s not something you’ll move by hand. It’s an investment best suited for operations where getting young animals to market weight quickly is a key financial goal. For a small flock of sheep, it might be overkill, but for a dozen cow-calf pairs, it can pay for itself in a single season.
Sioux Steel Mineral Feeder: Durable & Mobile
Minerals are one of the most expensive inputs in a grazing operation, and also one of the most susceptible to weather damage. Leaving a mineral tub out in the open is like throwing away dollar bills every time it rains. The Sioux Steel Mineral Feeder is designed specifically to solve this problem.
Its key feature is a heavy-duty rubber hood that covers the mineral pan. Livestock learn quickly to nudge the flap up with their noses to access the mineral, and it falls right back into place when they’re done. This simple but effective design keeps rain, snow, and dirt out, ensuring the mineral stays clean and dry. This feature alone can cut mineral waste by over 50%.
Built from heavy-gauge steel with a wide, tip-resistant base, this feeder is nearly indestructible. It’s light enough for one person to flip over and drag to the next paddock but heavy enough that cattle won’t easily push it around or knock it over. It’s a specialized tool, but for protecting a high-value supplement, its durability and efficiency are unmatched.
Brower 16-Bushel Feeder for Larger Herds
For those running a larger herd or finishing animals like pigs on pasture, a simple trough won’t cut it. The Brower 16-Bushel Feeder offers significant capacity while remaining portable. Holding around 800 pounds of feed, it reduces the frequency of refills, saving you valuable time.
This feeder is designed to be moved with equipment. It sits on heavy-duty steel skids, allowing it to be towed behind an ATV or small tractor. Its real value lies in the adjustable feed gates at the bottom of the trough. You can fine-tune how much feed flows out, preventing animals from gorging or scattering feed all over the ground with their snouts.
This isn’t a feeder for a handful of goats. It’s a serious piece of equipment for a serious operation. The initial cost is higher, but the labor savings and drastic reduction in feed waste can provide a quick return on investment for anyone feeding 20 or more head of cattle or a large sounder of pastured pigs.
Behlen Country Poly Trough: Lightweight Choice
Sometimes, simple is best. The Behlen Country Poly Trough is a no-frills, lightweight bunk feeder that excels in ease of movement. Made from durable, molded polyethylene, it’s light enough for anyone to pick up and carry to the next paddock, even over uneven terrain.
This feeder offers zero protection from the elements, so it’s not ideal for free-choice minerals or feed that will sit out for days. Its strength is in daily feeding routines. You can carry it out, pour in the day’s ration, and let the animals clean it up. Because it’s so light, you can easily flip it over to dump out rainwater before filling it.
The poly construction means it won’t rust or rot, and it’s tough enough to withstand abuse from cattle, sheep, or goats. It’s an affordable and versatile option for small-scale farmers who feed a daily supplement and prioritize a feeder that can be moved easily by hand without any equipment.
OK Plastics Ground Feeder for Small Livestock
Sheep and goats have a special talent for wasting feed. They climb in troughs, stand in their food, and generally make a mess. The OK Plastics Ground Feeder is designed to thwart these efforts with its low profile and internal partitions.
This feeder sits directly on the ground, making it difficult for animals to tip over. The multiple feeding slots or holes prevent them from putting their feet in the trough and soiling the feed. This design forces animals to eat more slowly and carefully, which significantly reduces the amount of feed that gets pushed out onto the ground.
Made of a single piece of molded plastic, it’s incredibly durable and easy to clean. It’s a perfect solution for providing grain or pellets to a flock of sheep or a herd of goats. While it doesn’t offer weather protection, its waste-reducing design makes it a far better choice than a simple open trough for smaller, more mischievous livestock.
Tuffy Bunk Feeder: A Simple, Tough Option
The Tuffy Bunk Feeder is the definition of a workhorse. It’s essentially an indestructible, thick-walled plastic tub that can handle anything you throw at it—or in it. There are no moving parts to break and no metal to rust.
Its simplicity is its greatest strength. You can use it for grain, hay, water, or minerals. It’s light enough to be moved by hand but has a low center of gravity, making it difficult for animals to tip. You can easily secure it to a fence post or tire to keep it in place if you have particularly pushy livestock.
Like other open troughs, it provides no protection from rain, so it’s best for daily rations that will be consumed quickly. But for a rugged, affordable, and multi-purpose feeder that will last for decades, the Tuffy is a fantastic choice for any small farm. It’s the kind of gear you buy once and never have to think about again.
Choosing a Feeder for Your Grazing System
There is no single "best" feeder. The right choice depends entirely on your specific operation, your animals, and your management style. Thinking through a few key questions will point you in the right direction.
First, what are you feeding? Expensive mineral that needs protection from rain requires a covered feeder like the Sioux Steel. Daily grain rations that are eaten immediately can be served in a simple, open trough like the Behlen or Tuffy. The feed itself dictates the level of protection required.
Next, consider your animals and herd size. A creep feeder is only useful if you’re trying to supplement young animals separately. A large-capacity Brower feeder is only practical if you have enough animals to justify its size and a way to move it. Match the feeder’s scale and features to your livestock.
Finally, be realistic about your labor and equipment. If you move fences every day by hand, you need a feeder you can also move by hand. If you have an ATV or tractor, your options expand to heavier, higher-capacity models. Your choice should fit seamlessly into your existing workflow, not create a new bottleneck.
Ultimately, a portable feeder is more than just a container; it’s a tool for managing your pasture, your animals, and your budget more effectively. By choosing a feeder that aligns with your specific grazing goals, you reduce waste, improve soil health, and make the daily work of rotational grazing just a little bit easier.
