[Clay]

What are people's preference- wood, metal or plastic. Does it come down to price or is one type better than the other.

[SallyintNorth]

Metal lasts better than wood, in general.  Haven't tried plastic. 

The most important things are

• Drain holes. So that rain water drains away when the trough is left face up.
• Easy to carry and move, some sort of cross-piece handle is very useful

[harmony]

Agrees with Sally's points. I have some plastic ones which are light but nothing to get hold off when you move them.


We actually made our own from wide plastic duct pipe this year with wooden ends. They are quite wide. I find many troughs are not wide enough and if sheep get their heads in before you get the feed in you can't get it in at all. Worse with pet sheep who don't shoo away that easily because they know the feed should be in there!

[Fleecewife]

We use wooden troughs, called bakies round here, from the agric store with change from £20 (£10 the last time we bought one)  They don't rust but they do eventually rot, if you don't store them inside to give them time to dry out over the summer.
Here, a major consideration is weight, as it's so windy that even the wooden ones have been known to blow a fair distance.  Plastic would be gone in a jiffy.  We have tried home made ones but without much success.  Bakies need to be sturdy as sheep will shove them around.

[twizzel]

Galvanised metal... hard wearing and don't blow away or rot, but heavy to move.

[Marches Farmer]

JFC plastic ones - heavy enough to withstand 100 m.p.h. winds on our hilltop and have lasted 14 years.  We've drilled a hole in the base at each end and always put them running down the slope so water drains out.  We also put out one more trough than is needed for the number of sheep, so we can chuck a handful in at the end of one or two, the sheep dive in and we can then (hopefully) put a reasonable amount in the empty one.  Half the sheep will then transfer to that so we can go round and put the rest in the others without getting mugged.

[Foobar]

If you ever have to move them then JFC plastic ones every time.  They don't blow away, very easy to clean (self cleaning really).  Everything else is too heavy.