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This trick involves making a hole in one of the ends and placing a soda vacuum plug.
This trick is used at the farm Granja Navarons, in Barcelona (Spain) for emptying and cleaning a long feed trough quickly.
The feeding management implies having to empty and clean the sows' feed troughs. If they are dirty, the feed gets spoilt and turns sour (specially if it is mixed with water), so the sows will reject it. Even mycotoxins could proliferate.
This happens specially in the case of long feed troughs, because several sows eat in the same place and the feed is mixed with water.
To facilitate cleaning, an easy solution in these cases implies making a hole in the lower part of one of the ends of the feed trough and blocking the hole with a plug. When the moment of emptying it arrives, we will remove the plug, allowing all the water and the remains of feed to exit easily. We will then block the hole again with the plug.
The plug used on this farm is like the ones used for soda or sparkling water (it allows to open and close the bottle several times without losing the fizz). It has a knob that regulates two different diameters for the inner cylinder of the plug. When it is 'open', this diameter is small, and this allows us to introduce it in the hole. One placed we turn the knob and the diameter increases, leaving the hole completely blocked.