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Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | Anyone on here have any experience? Thinking it would be nice to grind alfalfa to make an alfalfa meal at times, for different rations and all, just wonder if it is even possible. I know it would take some power, what else am I missing? |
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NE Kansas | Use a Haybuster tub grinder. |
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| Backgrounded calves like that for quite a few years would mix the grain, supplement and hay all in the grinder mixer and run the hay through the hammermill. Made an excellent and consistent TMR but I was using a smaller older gehl grinder mixer which was very slow, hay had to be ground from small square bales, 1 slice at a time and even then had to hold onto the slice and slowly feed it. It was VERY time consuming, though it made very good feed on a very small budget. For 5 or 6 thousand you can buy a small Knight reel mixer which will give you a very nice cow ration and can throw the grain and small bales of hay in the mixer all at once, with not near as much of a time investment, and probably same equipment costs, minus all the tractor hours. |
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middle TN | I use my old Gehl 100 all the time for grinding alfalfa....that is straight alfalfa. Almost any grass ( Ochardgrass, Bermuda, etc.) and it will be problems, although I have ground wheat hay and limited amounts of wheat straw. The little bales work easier, but since I usually can find 3x4 big bales of western alfalfa much cheaper, I use those. Just break the "flakes" into smaller pieces so they will fit down the chute. If I can't grind on a slab, I will spread a tarp under where I break the hay apart to make it easier to clean up all the shattered leaves and run them through as well. I can grind with my 2440 JD (60 hp), but I have to be easy and use smaller amounts at one time, usually use a bigger tractor when I grind hay. I grind alfalfa for weaned calf feed, but the calf-feeder or wagons get raided for the chickens, turkeys and ducks too. It is important to have your other ingredients( corn, oats, SBM, etc) already in the mixer before grinding the hay, as the hay by itself will bridge and you won't get a good mix. Hope this helps
Jared in TN |
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Holton,KS | Try and find a JD 750 with a hay table for small squares . Or a NH makes one too. If your not feeding to many and always put grain in 1st. |
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Kettle River, MN | If you do decide to grind alfalfa check the operators manual for the recommended screen size for hay. We've never done it but from everything I've heard and what I see on here it is slow. Plus its not like you can go grind a whole mix of alfalfa meal, you have to be mixing it into the feed so your not gaining real much as far as being able to have another ration ingredient.
I agree with EDDIE in getting a small TMR. That would be faster more versatile and can be used for many different ration possibilities. Reel auggie mixers take very little power. |
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| We used to do it for sheep rations. Took some time, but worked very well. We had a CIH grinder that we put a hay roll attachment on it. Basically to was a powered roller that fit in the throat that limited the feed rate so the hammers wouldn't suck the flake in too fast. Without it the grind length wasn't very consistant.
Took about 10 minutes to feed in 500lbs of small squares if my memory is correct.
Dave |
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Lander, WY | Growing up my brother and sister had sheep, found some cheap, stemmy alfalfa for them, they wouldn't eat it, so we ran it through an old, well worn Fox silage chopper and blew it into a pickup bed wagon and they would eat it just fine. Don't know if you would be able to find a pull type chopper in your area, but there used to be a lot of choppers around that are now too small to be used...the Fox we just pulled the head off and fed the bales onto the conveyor feeding into the feed rolls. |
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Kettle River, MN | Be careful putting hay in a chopper.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ny/03ny049.html
Granted a conveyor sounds like a safer way to feed in the hay. |
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Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | this is the reason why.
http://www.grazeonline.com/articles/oneshot.html
My line of reasoning is that if I can use homegrown feedstuffs, Alfalfa hay, ear corn, oats, etc, I can get the desired result without having to tmr feed. One, mixers are difficult to find here and pricy, and two, rather do something like in the article and only have to grind two or three times a week rather than every day. Also reading responses, I see that there are some problems feeding it into the mill. Could you preprocess it with a small square bale shredder and feed it into the mill that way or would a feeder table be your best bet? Just thinking here. |
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Kettle River, MN | Might have worked for him and it might work for you but you still need to figure out something that works for your operation.
"It's not all necessarily the one shot," Glenn says. "It's more that we were feeding the cows properly." I think that says it all right there. I would not worry about grinding the alfalfa and just concentrating on getting a balanced healthy home ground feed mix. When your grazing you won't need to worry about the protein source as much because in good pasture you might have problems getting the MUN low enough.
That article is from seven years ago. Try to contact the guy and see if he is doing the same thing or changed some the feeding plan.
Note: Cove Mountain has access to rent-free acres for hay and heifer grazing, but these items are booked as costs at general market rates.
^All this little stuff makes it so its hard to tell how profitable the dairy was just from the feeding program. There are definitly other factors to consider why it sounded like he was doing a good job.
Looks like good reasons not to go to a TMR right now. Keep in mind that very few farms quit using a TMR once they start even if used to put feed out or making a ration for a pasture supplement.
When you start having to process the hay twice and handle it more it kills efficiency and it might be easier just to feed it right to the calves or cows.
We purchase all our corn and raise small grains when we can to cut feed costs. Dad started grinding his own in the mid-sixties.
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| Any mixing wagon or grinder/mixer needs scales. I've done without, and although scales seem expensive, they will pay for themselves over and over. In time and mixing accuracy, especially w/ dairy. Unless you got kids who need to be kept busy, I'd really look at a Knight reel mixer w/ scales, can be had for around $8k in the midewest and surely less than $1k to ship it. Will give you a lot of flexibility for feeding forages, grains and byproducts of all different moisture levels and easy as backing it under an auger or using a loader to dump right into the top. A grinder mixer is limited to dry feeds with a flowability required for augers. Just think with you starting out where you are at, an investment in a mixer wagon will give you a lot more ration flexibility as well as be a huge labor saver as you can feed into bunks, take it out into the pasture and dump it into a windrow along a hotwire, or dump it on a pile and feed it with buckets or a loader. |
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North Cental Mo. | I used to use the big screen , feed corn in and I would flake by flake jab it in with a stick, 2 1/2 ton NH grinder mixer, got along just the best.
Roy |
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| This company used to make all the CIH grinders, I think they still do. We switched to a roller mill mixer when we got out of hogs, so haven't kept up since.
Anyway, they still show a hydraulic roll feed option . 20 years ago, it was a mechanically powered option, v-belt I think. You can add this option to most of the existing mills. It fits in the feed throat, just above the hammers and limits the rate that the hay flake is pulled into the hammers. We used the biggest screen available but don't know the hole size, maybe 2"??? If I wanted to process small squares and didn't want to go with a mixer wagon, that's the route I'd go again. Made for some dusty feed, but we added either soy oil or molasses to cut down on the dust.
Dave
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Lander, WY | Yeah, I don't know how the JD choppers feed off the head, on the old Fox's, there's a conveyor from under the head (hay or corn) into the feed rolls. We fed with a fork and were told, if the fork gets caught, let it go...probably not the safest operation, but if you were planning on doing a lot, wouldn't be too tough to build a feed table so you can stay 2 bales away from the feed rolls at all times.
Ran the Fox on a Case 1370, so could pretty much throw as much hay at it as you could...with something like that, could probably just build a gravity feed chute running into the feed rolls...of course, assuming the original poster is in an area that a 2 row forage chopper could be bought reasonable... |
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Grinding hay with a feed mill
