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Filling The Automatic Feedlines

written by

David Boatright

posted on

December 15, 2025

When it comes to our automated feedline systems one of the most common questions I get is regarding how we fill them up. While their are several ways the farms using our systems fill their bins our own method is pretty simple and inexpensive.

We had an old Gehl grinder mixer sitting around the farm that was last used in the 90's by my father and grandfather. It had been worn out then and had been dutifully parked in the corner of an old barn and just let sat for nearly 30 years when I laid eyes on it. 

It would die if I tried to grind feed with it, but we get all our feed ground to our specs and delivered to large permanent bins. I don't need this old machine to grind I just need it to tranfer the allready ground feed. So I pulled the grinding plates on it and just use the mix funtion with the boom arm. 

It's nothing fancy with is manual crank cables to adjust the boom arm but it is simple, inexpensive and most importantly - it works. 

A few times we have gotten small batches of feed in tote sacks and we have just lifted the back up from the bottom (sitting on a pallet) with forks and slowly split the side to dump the feed in the bin. 

I know a few other farms use old grain carts or feed trucks to fill them - really anything with an old boom arm will do the trick. 

It's amazing how much time it saves! Feeding broilers and hens used to take nearly half of every day now we fill bins once a week. It has been a game changer for our farm and the farms that have implemented it as well!

Michael put it pretty well when he said.....

" We've been using the PastureTek automatic feed lines for a year now, and few innovations have had this much impact on our farm. We haven’t lifted a 5-gallon bucket in over twelve months. Feeding 3,000 hens now takes me just one hour a week—freeing up my time to grow our farm instead of repeating the same task over and over. This system has made our egg production feel truly sustainable. I can't imagine raising birds without it. "

--Michael Gutschenritter - Three Brothers Farm

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