Why Lift Is So Important - Moving A Hoop With Feedlines

written by

David Boatright

posted on

January 13, 2026

One essential feature of adding a feed line system to a hoop is lift!

Without adding additional lift the additional weight of the feed reservoir on the front of your hoop with cause your runners on your hoop to dig into the ground and "plow" it up. 

In extremely wet conditions you can actually sink the entire front of your hoop (that was a bad day on the farm). As we designed our automatic feed line systems, it became very clear very quickly that we needed additional lift so as to prevent our hoops from making a journey to the center of the earth haha. 

Not only that, but we wanted this additional lift to work in all directions (not impeded moving the hoop from the rear or sharply side to side) and also not to endanger chickens on sharp turns. With those criteria the option of just putting additional runners under the bins went out the window. As those runners would make sharp turns much more difficult and if they were performed would also act like a scythe through a field of ripe chickens. Definitely not what we were looking for!

So we settled on wheels. In order to allow freedom of movement they are all directional and in order to ensure smooth farm operations every morning they are "never flat" tires. Which is to say they don't take air so they never get flat. 

With the adjustable mount we can get just the right amount of lift to allow our hoop and bins to move freely without "plowing", and our birds are not at risk of getting mowed down by extra skis. 

Best of all it allows the hoops to be moved easily even when the bins are full! It took us a few iterations before we got it right but the 6.0 Bin + feed system is a game changer (the 3.0 system is what is on most of our farm and it revolutionized things!). 

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Filling The Automatic Feedlines

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