We give both horses alfalfa cubes, and one of the horses beet pulp twice a day, which requires soaking both for a while. Normally I set up breakfast the night before, however we’re heading face first into winter here in ohio and the feed bins froze overnight.
I’m a lazy millennial, and I didn’t hand trench through clay and sandstone to run electrical to the barn just so I could keep bringing their food in at night! Any ideas?
Heated five gallon bucket?
https://www.jefferspet.com/products/5-gallon-heated-flat-back-bucket
How about a cooler that will fit the feed pans/buckets you setup the night before?
Or if pans don’t fit, then use something that does & transfer to pans in the morning.
Like this:
Even though I have electric in the barn I still carry that stuff into the house overnight so it is not frozen when I have to feed it in the morning.
Saves some electricity running another heated thing in the barn.
Assuming the horses are at your house, just bring my buckets of alfalfa cubes into the house at night - fill with hot water as soon as you wake up, and by the time you carry them back out to the barn it’ll be ready to eat.
I was thinking of something along the lines of a heated lunch box.
@trubandloki, I don’t know why ,but our electricity is super cheap here . We’re talking $25/m, I’m not worried about that.
@Cynical25, not having to do that is literally the point of this topic
Since we’re still setting up here I haven’t trenched electric and water yet. So we’ve run a 12 guage extension cord out (it has a lighted end on it so I know it’s working). Heated buckets would keep the stuff from freezing
It takes about 7 minutes of soaking for 5lbs of alfalfa cubes to be ready to feed - you can’t just go out to the barn 7 minutes earlier?
A a cooler may work if you find one large enough for your feed containers. Or watch FB marketplace for someone getting rid of a non-working chest freezer.
I do not pre-soak any feed during cold months as it freezes too quickly.
I use hot water to soak BP pellets (this takes about 15-20 minutes, hay cubes only slightly longer). Bonus is a nice warm meal during the winter. When I go to the house, I take the BP in a pail. When I am getting ready to go to the barn for the next feed, I add hot water. The water rapidly absorbs, and does not slop when carried. Cold outdoor temperatures quickly reduces the temperature to warm, I have no problem with feed being too hot. Not a solution for a large facility, but works for me.
LOL…a large facility would have a heated area to soak feed and would think me ridiculous.
power lines could be run overhead, then later buried if you use UF cables
In the summer in Florida, with normal ground water (which is usually pretty tepid, because, Florida) my cubes only take like 4 minutes to soak/mash up. Winter water is colder, but I still don’t NEED to use heated water, it only takes like 10 minutes. I do have a water heater, just need to fix a pipe, and I can’t imagine using actual hot water would take any more than a couple minutes to mash up.
You have electric at your barn, can you put in a water heater and just soak them right before feeding times?
When I lived in Ohio, to prevent water buckets and troughs from freezing several barn owners just insulated them, didn’t use heaters, perhaps that would be a solution for you. Water buckets we’d wrap styrofoam around, then layer on the duct tape. Water troughs would build a wood insulation box for, you could build something like that for your feed bin.
Or a big cooler or freezer to store them in?
https://www.dacocorp.com/containers-…ar-ice-totes#1
I would not be comfortable running a space heater overnight. My parents’ neighbor’s barn burned down from exactly that just a couple of years ago.
Didn’t realize these coolers were so cheap. I wonder why the woman bought such expensive ones for camping - _-
That cooler a light socket, and a light bulb would work. Doesn’t need a lot of heat, just enough to create some force against the cold in the cooler.
Well, a heated feed room would be the best the solution. If you already have electricity to the barn, can you install some kind electric heater in the feed or tack room? (Do you have a separate feed/tack room?)
You could try a heated bucket; they are not supposed to get warmer than 40 or so degrees. Just not sure how well they would work and/or if they would be too warm to leave plugged in all night.
It is not really a matter of saving the few bucks it will cost but I guess the stuff my mother taught me my entire life… no reason to waste electricity. No reason to run another heater in the barn when I can easily carry the bucket from the house in the morning.
OP, I’m confused as to whether or not you have electricity in the barn?
If you do, boil water to soak your mash. Put your mash in a good insulated picnic hamper. If necessary fill up the gaps with a layer of foam or a towel. Shut the lid and put it on the hay bales (not a cold concrete floor). Depending on how cold you really get, it should be OK. If a cooler can keep an ice block frozen for 12 hours in full summer weather it ought to be able to keep a boiling mash from freezing.
I would be uneasy about running an electric device overnight in the barn. If you aren’t, you could always try a slow cooker.
You could also put your bucket of hot mash with a good secure lid in a heated water tub, but that’s expensive for the job. You don’t want to put the mash itself in a heated tub and get solids on the heater coils.
I just keep a 2 gallon bucket (empty) at the house and tote the really hot water to the barn to make my seniors mash. My feed room isn’t fully enclosed and my feed does freeze, but the piping hot water works fine to dissolve it. So, no extra trips or devices needed. I bring the empty bucket back to the house after dumping the mash in my seniors feed bucket in his pasture, rinse it and its ready for the next meal
I would love to have hot water at my barn, but that’s another $$$ project that’s on the back burner for now… and has been for 16 years! :lol:
There’s electricity, that’s why I said I didn’t trench it by hand so that I could still have to bring food inside the house.
Running something electrical in the barn doesn’t bother me, they’re not locked in at night. I’m also semi well versed in all things electric.
Are you hoping for something that would keep it from freezing while the horses take their time eating? If so, I’d go with a heated bucket and a timer.
My feed room is not heated…but we do have a small cupboard, insulated with 1" styrofoam.
Once temps drop below freezing I keep it ‘heated’ by hanging a 60 watt trouble light inside.
Along with my soaked BP, I keep bute …and other meds that should not freeze… on a small shelf in there.
Wouldn’t take much lumber or work or skill to build a small insulated cupboard!
It sounds like, from the OP, that the breakfast meal soaks overnight. But it’s freezing with winter temps.
If that’s the case, I don’t understand why a heated bucket isn’t the solution here. Plug bucket in. Mix breakfast meal. Bucket will keep breakfast from freezing. Feed breakfast. What else even needs to be discussed 
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