|
Faunsdale, AL | The biggest thing that building a commodity shed did for us was being able to use feeds that don't flow through augers. And then there's those that will go through augers ........until they don't .........and then you are beating on the bin with a rubber hammer, up on top with a pipe poking down through to the bottom yadda, yadda, yadda!
We were using a system of bulk bins and a 10 Hp MixMill to make all the dry feed for around 1000 Jerseys when we started using wet brewers grains and whole cottonseed. Initially we just used shovels and top dressed them on the corn silage in the conveyor coming out of the upright silo. When we bought our first mixer truck to properly blend those feeds, we needed a convenient, one stop place to store and load it. So we built a 4 bay barn and kept the mixed dry feed in a bulk bin to auger into the mixer while it was parked to load the other commodities. It wasn't long before we could see that handling minerals, hominy and soybean meal with a loader would save a lot of labor and we wanted to go to a TMR and quit feeding free choice hay, feeding in the milking parlor etc. Those changes prevented having to repair or modernize all those older feeding systems. So the barn got expanded and eventually the wet feed was moved outside in open bays to allow a spare bay or two inside to make a place for extra loads, cleaning out etc.
For a few years we continued to grind and mix our calf and heifer grain in the old mill, but we eventually learned that it was simpler to use the auger mixers to produce those feeds as well. We did put them in bulk bins to make it easier to fill a truck mounted "cake" feeder or the various pails, drums etc the calf crew used to take grain to the calves in hutches. Again, making this change precluded a lot of repairs and maintenance, the old mill setup was needing even at the dramatically reduced output.
| |
|
Commodity Shed vs Bulk Bins
