Keeping break away battery charged?

[flusher]

How do you keep a break away battery fully charged when your trailer is used very little?
I have a two axle trailer with brakes on both axles. I use this trailer to carry my tractor to my apartment buildings when needed to move snow, but only when it is needed after there is no more room to push it with a plow truck. This means that the trailer sits unused for long periods of time. I have a Hopkins break away kit with the tester to check the charge on the battery.
How can I keep the battery fully charged when it is so rarely used? I know that I could connect the cable to my truck and charge it that way but would that drain my truck battery if truck engine not running. I hate to have the truck sitting there connected to the trailer and engine running for hours to charge the trailer brake battery.
Thanks in advance.
Bob L.

Take the battery out of the trailer, charge it up with a decent 12V charger, hook it to a Deltran Battery Tender and relax. I have six tractors (1 good one that I use constantly and 5 parade tractors) and usually 3 or 4 of the parade tractors have their batteries removed and on tenders.

 

[jeffsw6]

If a battery is actually dead for a long time, it may be damaged. There is some fancy chemistry behind it but the short of it is, the electrodes inside the battery cells corrode much more quickly when the battery has no charge, this reduces their effective surface area because large parts are covered up by corrosion, and now that battery is ruined and all you can do is recycle it and buy another.

If a battery runs totally dead you should test it with a load before you depend on it for a safety function.

 

[JFS2295]

I have a solar charger on my trailer for the last 5 years. Works great.