Tub grinders

Anyone have any experience using tub grinders to feed mamma cows?? I was looking for a way to lower the amount of wasted hay here. Seems they pull a lot out of the feeders and walk on it. Wondering what percentage of waste you get grinding it, and how long it would take to pay for itself? I know MSU claims a hay barn will pay for its self in 4-5 years just by storing your bales inside. I wonder what a tub grinder would take? Al
 
Cant help you with facts and figures but if you got a 100 or more cows,Haybuster has got that bale unroller and if you can feed in a pasture close to home,i would have one of them, if i had cattle! The idea is too spread it out,so it doesn't get tramped in the mud, and that's where u going to have the greenest grass the next year!
 
Ever looked at hay saving bale ring racks? We experimented with one last year and the savings were clearly visible. Don't have a way to measure, but looking at the ring, it was clearly helping. Getting rid of fat old overweight boss cows helps too. They stand sideways to the bale ring and eat ALL day.
 
Al I was told by a guy in SD he ground his because they ate much more with much less waste with all the rot on the outside of his bales from setting out in a row.
 

Haybuster 1000 or 1100 are reliable and affordable machines. If you are grinding alfalfa or shorter grass a 100-150 hp tractor will run them fine, Grinding long lowland hay better have some more smoke on the front of it. We used a 1000 on a 100 hp moline for over twenty years and now run a 1100 on a 250 hp tractor. Ground hay works great for us, because we can mix low quality corn stalks with better hay or silage and makes better use of both types of feed. Bale processors are great machines also, but you don't have the ablility to mix low quality and high quality hay as well.
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To get the good out of tub ground hay you really need to put it in a TMR wagon and blend molasses or grain with it. Look at a bale processor. They take less horsepower. They have a rotary chopper that the bale turn against. This mixes it some and sizes it. A lot of brood cow guys use them.
 
I have a haybuster and as JD Seller mentioned I also have a TMR wagon, I don't grind in piles because in our climate (rain all winter) I would lose way more than I save if I did. I feed a lot of cull cows as well as maintain a cow herd, ground hay is easier for short mouth and zero mouth cows to eat and they eat more of it therby gaining much faster. Mixing liquid feed and rolled corn or grain screening pellets in the TMR makes a complete ration that does not get sorted in the bunk, for cows on pasture we use liquid feed and water to bind the hay, also, any poor hay is eaten and not sorted this way. If labor is tight then the down side is daily feeding or feeding at least every other day for cows on pasture, best to have covered bunks especially if feeding every other day, I always keep a few rolls in rings or feeder wagon in case it gets too muddy or raining steady for a few days in the winter. As far as payback, you can buy a good used tub grinder reasonable, they will be higher this time of year and get cheaper in the spring, same with used TMR wagon, this type of equipment is meant to grind/mix thousands of cycles and maintenance is cheap. I know that my current set up saves 20% on avarage on feed costs and actual hay saved, it paid off quickly.
 
I have fed hay about all the ways possible. A hay ring wasted WAY MORE than anything else but the convenience of then still make me use them.
Neighbors up north claimed that he fed more hay using a bale processor than rolling bales out on the ground. ( northern Nebraska on frozen ground) I fed with a Haybuster 276 or some such number. Feeding Sudan grass I thought it helped utilize it. Big stems. Alfalfa it would blow the leaves off and waste it. Always unrolled them.
Tub ground hay always went through the feed wagon and into bunks. Along with any supplements. I always hired my grinding done.
Guess my suggestion is do what works for you.
 
. TMR mixers are expensive and require fairly high hp tractor to chop bales, put a lot of hours on a tractor and the tractor will burn through a bunch of fuel. Chopping hay in a TMR mixer requires that you also pay close attention to the sharpness of the cutting knives. Dull knives require more more time and hp and fuel to chop the hay. Many dairy farmers around me went this way a few years ago, and found several things. First everyone thought they could stick any old 100 plus hp tractor on the mixer, only to find that the clutch packs on most 40 year old tractors won?t take the strain . Secondly TMR mixers in truth , have a short life expectancy, and not staying on top of knife maintenance will also put extra stress on the TMR gear box, and this is an expensive repair.
One other thing that hasn?t been mentioned is the fact that cows rumens work better with longer coarse hay than short chopped feed. Forces the cow to chew more and longer, and far less chance of a twisted stomach feeding long hay compared with chopped feed. Maybe a bit of wasted hay around the feed rack isn?t costing as much as it might first appear.
Keeping your hay under cover to prevent spoilage is probably more cost effective that buying a machine to chop the hay in an attempt to prevent wasted hay. Wrapping hay with stretch wrap plastic is much cheaper today than building a storage shed to put hay into. Storage buildings require insurance, maintenance, and a large capital investment. The plastic to wrap a bale this year cost me two bucks per bale.
I feed my hay in a labour intensive tie stall dairy barn, and have close to zero feed lost, but I don?t expect you to want to go to this extreme just to save a bit of hay
 

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