yep....Id buy one or two for sure.

The gear box and motor can be had for around $30. Any drum with a lid will work for the hopper. The only other real costs are a timer (around $20) and a 12 volt battery. I will be addind a solar panel soon, although the battery will probably last a year only running 2 seconds a day. I used a 12 volt power wheels battery. It has an 8 amp/hr rating.

How did you keep the Rice bran from coming out of the bottom of the drum when the feeder is not active?

I was gonna ask the same question. I'm assuming your relying on the rice bran to clock itself when the timer stops running?

The guys at On Time Feeders came up with this a couple years ago called The Bran Keg. You might want to look it up.

Its called the Powder Keg not the Bran Keg sorry

There is a garden auger bit on the bottom of the drive shaft. It has about a quarter of an inch clearance all the way around. The bran will stop itself. I did get the idea for the paddles from the powder keg which my friend has. The problem with the powder keg is it has to run for several minutes rather than seconds to disperse any substantial amount of bran. Mine dispenses 3/4 lb in 2 seconds. I checked it yesterday and something started eating the bran. I set my camera up yesterday as well. I will be at work for 2 weeks so I should have some pics when I return home.

Your right the powder keg took too long to dispense and you couldn't over fill it or the gears would strip! Been there done that. All of the bran feeders with augers cost a fortune. If you can get this to work it would sell like crazy! Keep me in mind if you start to sell them.

I am currently running this one. I am taking notes and seeing how it performs for the season. I would like to build some and sell them, however I want it to be foolproof and built to last. I have a few ideas to better my design. I will definitley post results of this feeder and updates as they come.

I have had the Powder Keg for about a year now and it has been nothing but a hassle. First off the legs barely raised the feeder off t he ground. This lasted about a week as hogs knocked it over in no time and pretty much destroyed it. By the time I got back to it they had worked it over pretty good. Bran was all in the motor battery housing etc. Contacted On Time and they sent me a new circuit board and battery housing (which was actually an updated version of what I had originally purchased). After that I knew I needed to do something different so I drove 2 foot sections of rebar into the ground, slid 3 foot sections of PVC pipe over the rebar then placed the factory legs into the PVC. This was fine except the bran would be taken by the wind when dispensed. So, I recently cut the PVC to about 24 inches and put the factory legs into that. Then I got a picture of a boar knocking the feeder up and out of the PVC. So then I drilled holes through the PVC and factory legs and put locking pins through them and it seems to be holding pretty good (only been up for a month without incident).

So, if this feeder ends up working good and is 4 foot off the ground it is definitely something I would be interested in as well as others in my lease. If they charge $150 at Cabela's for the Powder Keg you should be able to get at least that for your version.

Good work. Hopefully I will see this for sale soon.

armand

It may not be for sale in the big stores, but I will get with a few buddies to try it out. Keep it close until it has proven itself to me as well as my friends. Once I see that it will not disapoint I will make them available to other hunters. I still need to streamline the building of the unit. It was all trial and error with the first one. So far it is working well, but I already see small things that I can do to improve on it.