With human kids in the house and goat kids in the barn, you likely spend plenty of time jetting around in the family car. Despite not being as big as tractor tires, worn out old automobile tires are still quite valuable around the small farm. Reduce the trash you send to the landfill by trying at least one of these six projects the next time your car needs a new set.

Build a Goat Playground

Busy goats don't try to escape, so stack half a dozen tires into a rough pyramid shape to give them the perfect structure for playing king of the hill. Fill the centers up with dirt or gravel and top a few with a layer of concrete to help keep little hooves trimmed down. Bury a few on their sides, with only 2/3rds of the tire still above ground, to make short arches they can bounce on for fun.

Design a Tough Retaining Wall

Need to hold back an eroding bank of soil or edge your barn driveway to prevent accidents? Try building a retaining wall by stacking tires and tightly packing dirt into each new layer. For even greater support, pack more dirt around the stacks of overlapping tires. You can rent earth packing machines used for settling graded ground to speed up the wall building process.

Feed Your Cattle

Cattle are particularly hard on feeding bins and racks, especially bulls kept for breeding purposes. Mounting a tire to a barn wall or tying one to a fence panel is a quick way to make a durable feeder with no sharp edges to hurt your livestock as they eat. The average car tire is large enough to hold plenty of grain or hay for a single dairy cow, or use multiple tires for a larger herd.

Buffer the Walls

Feisty rams often start targeting barns as their competition, especially when there are no other male sheep to butt heads with over the females in the flock. Nervous horses can also do similar damage by kicking at the walls of the stalls when wanting to go out to pasture. Protect your walls from ongoing damage by mounting car tires at the right height to serve as bumpers that won't damage the animals either.

Anchor Your Equipment

With even the smallest tires used on compact cars weighing quite a few pounds, it's easy to re-purpose them as anchors or weights. Attach the bottom of lightweight hoop houses to rows of tires to keep them from blowing away while keeping the structure easy to drag around the field with a tractor or truck. Toss a few tires on the edges of your silage pile plastic cover to keep wind from blowing it away. You can even toss a tire or three into the back of an empty pickup truck for better traction on a slick or muddy hill.

Hang a Tire Swing

Finally, add a little old-fashioned charm and plenty of fun for the family by hanging a tire swing. Larger car and truck tires are big enough for adults to use too. If you've got power tools for cutting the rubber, get creative with ideas like:

• Painting the tire with bright colors and patterns
• Hanging the rubber ring horizontally by screwing in eye-bolts or U-bolts for attaching the ropes or chains
• Cutting through the material and trimming it to resemble a dragon, horse, or other creature

With so many good ideas for reusing tires, you won't end up with a pile of rubber waste sitting around the farm anytime soon. Be sure and drill holes in any tires you're storing for a project so water doesn't collect in them and provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes.