- Location
- East Sussex
Are straw choppers really worth it?
- Thread starter Headless chicken
- Start date
- Location
- South Molton
Cattle moved out when bedding as still throws any stone but at low level against panels.
Don't mix machinery and livestock.
- Location
- Cornwall
Guess it depends on the farm... we've a handful of tractors that mostly just sit around all winter and are busy in the summer..
Can't see why anyone would feed silage through one though.. waste of diesel in my opinion.. and it fluffs it up too much so you can't get much in the feeder ..
- Location
- East Sussex
we feed all stock with ours. It’s that or a hand fork!
- Location
- South Molton
We had a demo feeder years ago, put a round bale in it and filled two ring feeders. Looked lovely, until the driver said , 'what do you way me to do with the other half!'
Getting feed along a feed barrier is different.
Is that along feed barriers?
Homesy
Member
- Location
- North West Devon
Sorry crap photos. Cubicles all the way. Mine go into them at a week old. Costs next to nothing to bed them compared with straw. The bullers could almost be done without any sawdust. On 20 calves and 20 bullers, saves me over £3000 per year on straw. Yes they have to be scraped but takes no longer than bedding up with straw and the slurry is scraped into the lagoon so costs very little to spread. No cubicle training of fresh heifers. It's a no brainer if you can get cubicles to work in the shed.
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- Location
- South Molton
Capital cost for extra lagoon capacity?
Lower shed costs, capital cost of shed, labour cost of scraping twice? A day?
£3000 cost reduction you will also now of course included a fert cost for the straw you aren't using. 3000/£75/t = 40t@£40/t = £1600 extra fert bill.
What I am saying is that there are so many cost benefits/increased costs with any change is operating.
- Location
- East Sussex
Inside 70’s Tyler sheds. We put a line of quadrants between two yards in the feed passage and blow against them from the scrape passage (don’t bother chasing cows out as they can run to a self feed face). The reason is that they aren’t wide enough for a pusher so end up hand balling it over so they can reach it.
Our self feed face is too high to efficiently give them the whole feed without waste. Also fill some manger/barriers that are adjustable height.
mainly beefy stuff nowadays.
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- Location
- East Sussex
Is it clamp silage or bales?
Whats a tyler? Is it a concrete frame shed?
- Location
- East Sussex
clamp silo and, Yes, conc frame shed.
You look to have enough silage in front of them to last most of the winter!
- Location
- East Sussex
trying to tidy the face up a bit so keeping them off it.......... apart from the odd mountain goat wannabe when I’m filling the wagon!! Wind and rain got the sheet down the other day and it was carnage when I took that pic. That’ll all be gone and spotless from the passageway by tomorrow arvo!
- Location
- North Yorkshire
Anyone using a straw blower for bedding pigs? 40kg upwards size. Looking at a telehawk for doing the job, anyone able to suggest how far it will throw dry straw? I've seen comments saying they reach their limit where a pto machine starts but that might be a good thing in not creating as much dust
buffalo_soldier
Member
- Location
- cumbria
Them stanchions look like a pia?.
How did you get a video on here?
Always been a weakness of this site.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Or a weakness of its users [emoji23]
- Location
- East Sussex
we work with what we've got because suckers aren't going to pay for much else!
Do you have an iPhone/android phone before I start?
buffalo_soldier
Member
- Location
- cumbria
- Location
- East Sussex
I'm on iPhone which takes 'live' photos, so hold your finger on and they show as short vids, these 'live' photos cannot be directly uploaded to TFF as a moving image so you need to convert them to a linkable gif file. Download an app called giphy, open giphy and press plus button I think, select live photo you want, add tags if you like and then arrow to upload. You'll get an offer to join but I skip this, then press the button for a link which you cut and paste into photo attachment link in tff. Job done. I guess you have to register with giphy to find the gif file later on.
i presume android would be similar.
multi power
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
A straw chopper is fine, IF you can run and maintain it in a cost effective manner, in @Headless chicken case I bigger shed would be a more suitable option