Feeding down a central passage with telehandler

early riser

Member
Location
Up North
Current winter regime is shear grab silage into outdoor bunkers topped up with parlour cake. Slurry production from acres of outdoor concrete is an issue so looking to feed the cows indoors along a barrier behind locking yokes for ease of management.

To avoid the cost and complication of running a mixer wagon, I am interested in buying a big rehandling bucket and bucket mixing a ration against the clamp wall and then dumping it into the feed passage with a telehandler.

Question is, for a covered central feed passage, which is the best way of distributing feed along the length of the barrier this way?

Would it be best to have a standard width feed passage (e.g. 16-18ft) and dump a bucket along one side and then nudge it into/spread it along the barrier with edge of bucket, then repeat for other side.

OR

Have a feed passage only slightly wider than loader (e.g. 8-9ft) and dump buckets of mixed feed along the centre of the passage whilst reversing and then push the feed up at night with a V-shaped pusher.

Just interested in the day-to-day practicalities of it and what width of passage people find works best.

There is a chap in Cheshire that won the Promar milk minder competition who feeds his cows in this way with a Kramer and big bucket, can't for the life of me think of his name??

Thanks

p.s. I am 100% not buying a mixer wagon and my pits are too small for self feed
 

Manney

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Penzance
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Dave6170

Member
We have a narrow passage just wider than our handler and i think its a pain in the arse. We have a 3 ram shear grab and i fill it for 2 days. Have to fork in last bit of silage because they cant reach. Have to lo k ccattle out to fill the passage so i dont crush any heads
 

early riser

Member
Location
Up North
If going narrow passage why not use cowpow barrier. Won't be self locking. But no pushing in

Cow Pow barriers will be £20k minimum and if you happen to make crappy silage one year for whatever reason you are committed to just feeding blocks of silage and have limited options for buffering.

Also if I remember correctly @newholland had all sorts of issues on the other forum with larger Holstein cows and sore necks
 

Ffarmwr123

Member
Location
South Wales
Personal opinion would be go for the wider passageway you won't regret it. So it can be pished with a machine to avoid the Labour of a narrow passage and forking in by hand. With a wider passage it allows for change of possibly a larger machine etc along with storage for any machinery during summer months.
 
We have a narrow passage just wider than our handler and i think its a pain in the arse. We have a 3 ram shear grab and i fill it for 2 days. Have to fork in last bit of silage because they cant reach. Have to lo k ccattle out to fill the passage so i dont crush any heads

Remember an article in PFI, an irish guy feeding like you in a narrow passage, got fed up with forking the last of the silage to the cows. So he made a toblorone shaped structure out of thick plywood and put it in the centre of his passage, it was low enough to allow the tractor to drive over it, the silage block was tipped gently on it, the block split and fel either side, the cows could reach the bottom of the triangle, so it eliminated any forking of silage .
 
For the op, I have a similar problem here with lots of uncovered concrete which equals to lots of water in the slurry pit, along with other design faults with the cubicle housing, my only option to improve things would be a new cubicle shed (when i can afford it) been thinking long and hard how to do the feeding, and the simplest and cheapest idea i have is for feeding on the outside just using a shear grab, just drop blocks off in front of the feed fence, and have a silage pusher of sorts to push up the silage a few times a day. (y)
 

Scholsey

Member
Location
Herefordshire
How many cows can you feed out of one bucket full of silage ?

We have a 2.8m3 one and it made a 530-70 dance, better on a 536-60.

Of 30% dm grass and 35% dm maize about 30 cows and will fully empty in about 30 seconds with tick over revs.

I just shear grab alternate grass/maize into a tump against the clamp face shaking as I tip so it's not in blocks as it falls out, then scoop it up with the bucket and kick it out.
 

newholland

Member
Location
England
Cow Pow barriers will be £20k minimum and if you happen to make crappy silage one year for whatever reason you are committed to just feeding blocks of silage and have limited options for buffering.

Also if I remember correctly @newholland had all sorts of issues on the other forum with larger Holstein cows and sore necks

@early riser I must point out that as explained in both this forum and the old BFF forum that O'Donovan Engineering offered us the absolute best customer service possible- O'Donovan's listened to our big Holstein cow problem (which is rare as most cow pows are used for NZ cows). They went away and manufactured another full set of galvanised, special one off design barriers to suit our cows. They then both delivered and fitted this complete set of new barriers absolutely free of charge to us. We recently purchased 6 of their stainless steel tip over troughs and I fully recommend O'Donovan engineering to any other dairy farmer and we would certainly use them should we build another new dairy building.
 
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Blue.

Member
Livestock Farmer
I've a relation who feeds and mixes for his 250 milk cows just using his loadall and bucket,grass silage,wholecrop and blend.

Only downside is time taken,I can feed my whole herd in half the time,but I'm feeding 230 in one mix.
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
We are stuck with narrow feed passages for beef cows. Found the best solution is a quad bale of straw up the middle and run a straw blower full of block silo up the scrape passage to feed out. No forking :)
 

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