Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Feeding the machine.....

1000 lbs per minute!

Nice stack,

How long's the pile last?

Sam,

You make me tired.

Ben, we're shipping calves next week so it'll last quite awhile after they are gone.

1.5-2 months?

And it gets mixed with corn silage so we really don't feed all that much chopped feed to begin with.

About 60 ton in the mound.

Grind roughly 200 ton from fall-spring.




Ed, it is easy work(running a loader tractor) but can be a little stressful(sore neck..).
We try to be uber careful when handling bales around the machine/operator.

You know all about safety!

That'll keep everyone happy.

The worst part of the jobs gotta be taking the net off of all the bales.

We bag a few hundred ton of grass in May/June to mix with our corn silage.

The hay grinders can send hay dust a half a mile. The sound a bit farther. Love em.

Ben, the net is left on and ground up.
(and it does suck getting that chit off a bale when it's icy..)


Grinding twine/wrap isn't an issue for feeding calves(short term..) but you wouldn't want to do it over the life of a cow.

And a 1500lb bale might have a pound of wrap on it(?) so it's a relatively low percentage.

Got it,

Hopefully that new JD earned it's keep

I like the loader controls.

Sam, someday I'll tell you about flax straw.

Cool pics!

I think I've picked a half ton of premium quality alfalfa hay dust outta my nose over the years.

The wind don't always blow right.

Thanks for the memories.

Several years ago, I sold a very nice quarter horse mare to some locals. A few months later, I heard she gotten sick, and then died. Seems as if no one could figure out what happened, until their other horses also died. Turns out they were feeding round bales with the net, and the horses were eating some of the net. Apparently, it got in their digestive system, and killed them. I rarely feed hay with the net, but always cut it off if I do. That includes cattle and horses.

I have heard of animals eating plastic grocery bags, and it killing them.

Speaking of grinding things. A long while back, at Pine Bluff, Arkansas I saw where they were grinding up old cross ties. It was at a batch plant where they made hot mix asphalt. I don't know and could not find out if the two were related. Any ideas? miles

One of the batch plant asphalt places here will now take all the shingles they can get< sure makes it great for roofing contractors. No charge dump anytime great deal all around

Here's a study in that very thing.

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/AS1736-08.pdf

The digestive system of a horse is much different than that of cattle, and that's why the plastic net will kill a horse. Horses can die eating moldy feed, while a cow won't. Most years I feed my horses square bales that have been kept inside and are mold free, being very picky as to the hay I feed. Some years I have to feed round bales, and always try to feed the ones that have been stored inside and were baled dry. However, this year I'm running a few calves with the horses, and have been feeding round bales that were kept outside. I just keep plenty of them out so the horses can have enough good hay to choose from. I also much prefer the sisal twine to the plastic, as I hate having that plastic being left on the ground, though I usually take the time to remove it before feeding.

I've been getting some square bales from a farmer, where I find a good deal of pieces of white plastic in the bale. Once going there for a load of hay, I saw pieces of it all over the place. Don't know where it comes from, but clearly they pay no attention to it while cutting and bailing. While I use up they rest of that hay, I've been pulling the bales apart in their feeder.

And some people use the term "horse quality" very loosely. A cow can grind through most anything, not so with a horse.

Sorry to get side tracked.

While talking about horse hay, I thought about this blister beetle danger for horses. It can be very quickly fatal.

http://hayusa.net/blister.html

Richard, sounds itchy!


Ken, we try and work around the wind forecast but like you say sometimes it doesn't go as planned...



I just tried looking up what a roll of wrap weighs but couldn't find any info.

Depending on the number of wraps and bale size you can make about 160-200 bales per an 8800' roll.

Say a roll weighs 80-100 pounds?

Going by those estimates the pile above(90 bales/1350lbs) would have roughly 40-50lbs of plastic in the grand total of 121,000lbs.


But I guess weight isn't the issue, volume(of the ground wrap) is the concern.


As far as unrolling bales with the pickup for the cows I ALWAYS take the wrap(or twine) off and take it with me. It can be a huge pain in the ass when it's icy but way better than choking a cow not to mention the extreme mess it would create on the feed ground.

I hate garbage of any kind.


We feed on stubble fields and it sucks having to get out and clean missed twine off of a drill/toolbar or worse yet cut it off of the 'axle stubs'. It'll raise hell with wheel bearing seals.

Fricken' pain in the ass so I've become the plastic Nazi!

You become a lot more fussy about cleaning it up when you're the one running the tractor later on...