Ultimate Hayfeeders offers budget solution to healthy diet for cattle

FIELD days have been important for motivation and a source of market research for dairy farmer Andrew Talarico, who started building hay feeders to stop cattle fouling their fodder more than 25 years ago.

Feed man: Andrew Talarico, owner of Ultimate Hayfeeders.

FIELD days have been important for motivation and a source of market research for dairy farmer Andrew Talarico, who started building hay feeders to stop cattle fouling their fodder more than 25 years ago.

His parents, Frank and Ida, moved to Tatura in the Goulburn Valley in 1976, where his father ran an earthmoving business.

In the 1980s, the farm’s dairy herd was updated with an influx of stud dairy stock and the family were looking at incremental improvements but money was always tight.

So Andrew put his welding skills to work and set about building frames to feed round bales suitable for up to eight cows, chalking designs on a patch of concrete near the dairy and using wire to mock up the shapes for the feeder.

He said they built some feeders, and with leftover materials assembled a couple of extra units to sell. Soon after, however, an existing manufacturer said they were similar to its patented design and threatened legal action.

Reluctantly, the feeders were withdrawn, and he pondered how to distinguish any future design. He said a stop sign prompted him to think about different shapes He took some prototypes of his first Ultimate Hay Feeders to the field days and sold seven in two days. He recalled attending a field days soon after, but was puzzled about the lack of interest until a question about how he put the bale in the feeder or the feeder around the bale. He said he thought nothing of rolling a steel hay feeder across a paddock, bracing the frame on his knee and flipping it over the top of a round bale before letting the cattle into the paddock. He realised there was a market for lighter, small hay feeders that could be assembled around a hay bale.

This was when he devised a split hay feeder that could be hinged open so the bale could be rolled inside.

After building his first hay feeder in 1991, the designs have been refined to accommodate plastic wrapped silage, large square bales and higher numbers of front-end loaders installed on farm tractors. He has patented his designs.

“There are more than 20 different models of hay feeders now,” he said. “And we can custom build.”

The big sellers are tractor-lift models. Recently, Andrew developed a 32-head feeder with an adjustable metal mesh floor that can be tilted to lift the feed towards the livestock.

Keep an eye out for Andrew and his hay feeders at Elmore field days this week.