DIY Animal Feed Ball

Hey guys, today we are going to be making my DIY hay ball. The purpose of a hay ball is to feed your animals such as horses (or donkeys in my case) hay but regulate how fast they can eat the hay. The ball also provides hours of fun for them.

You can buy these but they are fairly expensive for such a relatively simple idea.

An alternative to this printed version could be made with wire and mesh (I planed to make an example but have run short of time) simply bend the wire to shape around a ball join with ties and use mesh with holes, similar to the printed version but much simpler.

-3d printer + filament
- mesh netting (picked some up from a local hardware store for a few dollars made for potted plants)

Alternate
-Fence wire
-Mesh

This print was pretty easy for the design itself I used this great design by greenmikey here.

You need 12 Pentagons and 20 Hexagons and I think 89 connectors all printed at 150% the original size!
As for my settings I just used 15% infill no supports and they worked great.

I started by putting together all but three pieces in the Truncated Icosahedron, next I placed my mesh inside and slowly hot gluing it to each hexagon and cutting the mesh as needed to wrap it all around to the top.

Once you make it all the way around glue in the last few hexagons.

Next cut away the mesh from a few hexagons of your choice using a Stanley knife.

All done, nice and simple today! This project has been great not only was it simple but it was super successful! Knowing our donkeys I was positive the would just rip it to pieces in minutes but after many uses they are still using it and starting to become comfortable playing with it and not being scared.

Hopefully this can help a few other creative animal owners out and get their animals having fun in the sun!