MachineryLink

Recently we hired a person with a truck/trailer-mounted hay grinder to come to the farm and grind about 80 round hay bales from the last couple of growing seasons. This equaled about 47 tons of hay piled high, which will feed our beef cows the majority of this winter.

While this marked the first time we have hired a hay grinder in six years, in the past we have hired tub grinders to come to the farm various times and mix different types of hay together. Most of the time it was alfalfa hay, but I know there also has been some brome, corn stalk and oat hay mixed in there.

I can remember the tub grinder coming to the farm when I was growing up, even though I was usually in school. Most of the time, Dad would have them come in that time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The holiday hay grinder would visit our house a bit like someone else who visits once a year that week. Santa left us presents, and the tub grinder left us a giant pile of chopped hay to play in.

We farm kids really looked forward to both visits.

I am not familiar enough with tub grinders to know what major differences in the machines have been seen over the last 25 to 30 years, but there have probably been some major changes in these pieces of equipment just like there have been in all farm machinery over this time period.

My guess is the capacity and speed of grinding bales has increased dramatically over the years. The few times I was around when we had the hay grinder come out when I was kid, it seemed like the guy was at our place for hours. The guy who came last week may have been around for maybe an hour or so and blew through the hay (literally and figuratively) like it was nothing.

Over the years, we have fed the hay in a portable feeder with slotted sides and trays on each side which were painted red. We always called it the "ruff feeder," but I guess I don't know for sure the feeder's real name.

For a while we had two of them, which worked out great for our situation and the number of cows we had. We would fill both feeders up on the weekend and pull one out to the cows that day, which would usually last until about mid-week.

Then I would pull the other feeder out to the cows. The next weekend would come around and we would fill them both up again. We did this all winter.

This winter, however, we will continue to use the one ruff feeder, but most likely we will have to retire the other one as the frame has been fixed so many times now there is not much to weld anything to anymore.

We have a couple of round bale feeders that have a metal skirt at the bottom, so we have been experimenting putting hay up to this level in a couple of these feeders. If this works and the cows don't waste a lot of hay, we may alter the other round bale feeders without metal at the bottom by temporally attaching some old belting at the bottom to hold in the chopped hay.

If this doesn't work, we may have to break down and buy another portable chopped hay feeder. We have looked at portable round bale hay feeders in which inserts can be attached to the metal bars of the feeder to allow chopped hay to be fed.

They don't give them away, though. Maybe Santa (or maybe the holiday hay grinder) will bring me one this year. I have been a good boy.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Russ Quinn can be reached at russ.quinn@telventdtn.com

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