Mixing up the grain for the beasties

Carl is contributing this entry!

Feeding the beasties (the feeder calves) every afternoon means that the grain mixture needs to be specially mixed up every month or so.

First step is to get 40 bushels of corn into a box in the truck from the silo. The corn is obtained from a nearby farm.

It comes out of the silo via an auger drive into this basin that is then used to fill 5 gallon buckets that are lifted to a box in the bed of the truck that will hold the 40 bushels.

The box a little more than 1/2 full of corn.

Back at the farm, 3 ingredients are fed into a grinder/mixer that combines them into the finished feed. The mixer/grinder is powered via the power take-off (PTO) from the tractor.

The first ingredient added is 2 bags of beet pulp shreds.

The empty bags of beet pulp.

Next, corn is being ground via an internal hammer mill in the mixer/grinder. You can see it pouring into the feed auger and being fed into the mixer/grinder.

Jimmy makes sure all the 40 bushels of corn is emptied from the box into the feed auger.

Next ingredient is 8 bales of alfalfa. These are being fed directly into the hammer mill grinder where they are ground and then mixed with the other ingredients in the mixer.

The finished (mixed) feed is dumped into a auger wagon for storage until it is needed.

Quite a bit of dust comes up while it is being added to the wagon.

Power for turning the auger on the bottom of the auger wagon is provided by the PTO on this tractor.

Patti is seen here filling one of  the six 5 gallon heavy buckets needed for today's feeding of the beasties.

All 6 buckets filled. The storage tub is also filled for the next few days of use to fill the buckets.

Patti is putting the last of the 6 buckets into the back of the pickup to transport the feed to the pasture where the beasties are located.

Carl is pouring in the feed into the troughs for feeding the beasties. One of the beasts is observing to make sure it is being done correctly.

Just 4 of the many beasties that are happy eating the feed that was specially prepared for them.