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West Salem, Illinois | A little background I usually run between 20 to 40 head of brood cows and feed all the heifers out, and wanting to locate a few more head of broods. I am currently using a NH baler that makes a 4x5 net wraped bale. I like the bales well enough but am severly dissapointed in the amount of hay that is wasted. By the time you fight the weather cut, rake, bale, move bales off the field, there is quite a bit of time invested plus all the cash outlay. Than you haul the hay in for the cows and they drag hay out of the feeder and crap on it than haul it back out to the field in the manure spreader. The reason I started using the net wrap was because of spoilage issues I had with twine and not having a place to store the hay inside. I've bought tarps and even a couple different types of feeders and really don't have that much luck with one versus the other for hay savings.
So what I'm actually thinking about is to upgrading my old square baler (little squares) and getting an accumulator of some sort and adding onto the barn to house the square stacks. Or the other thought is to keep rolling my hay and invest in some sort of hay grinder and hand feed the cows in a fence line bunk. My neighbor and I were discussing it this morning and he suggested grinding and getting wet ddgs from one of the three fairly close Ethanol plants and make a blend and pack or bag it like silage. I even wondered about chopping all of my hay and putting it up as haylage and getting soy hull pellets from the fairly local soy processing plant but don't know if this would work or not for lack of dry matter.
Also I should add that my hay fields are anything but flat and that in some places fairly trecherous to run a tractor and equipment on.
So fire away what works for you. And as always thanks in advance. | |
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Hay handling equipment
