Adelaide Hills, South Australia | I finally gave in to my wife and got a proper job. My body has prevented me from being able to milk cows since a bull tried to kill me 13 years ago. The milk price crash here last year meant that our leasee had to leave and then running our small beef herd, haymaking and odd jobs was not enough income. We are still searching for a sharefarmer to get us to reopen the dairy again.
I applied and was successful in being offered a job as an Agricultural department assistant at my daughters high school. It is a good job with plenty of variation. It is a busy job as we have 1ha of Vineyard to make wine and a further 20 ha of land for hay crops and running sheep with a couple of alpacas to protect lambs. We also have chickens for meat and some layers at different times as well as 4 pigs in the last term to grow out before Christmas. We also grow out 5 steers for the hoof and hook at the Adelaide show as well as show goats and show sheep.
We use a NH 353 grinder mixer to hammer mill and mix grain, hay and minerals for the Steers. Is it best to mill the grain or hay first? We are using barley and lupins. The lupins are difficult to get cracked properly. Should I feed the lupins in slower or change the screen to get them all cracked? We are using Lucerne hay and oaten vetch hay and it really powdered up. Any other tips for using it? We load and weigh the grain into rubbish bins and then tip them in. I think we need a better way.
This is the NH 353 and the tractor we use.
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 20170222_084957.jpg (125KB - 78 downloads)
20170221_160528.jpg (133KB - 76 downloads)
20170221_104924.jpg (116KB - 65 downloads)
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New job and grinder mixer operation help needed.
