Bulk Feed at the Ranch and One on the Ground

hi i'm mike and today on the ranch we are going to deal with bulk feed we're going to get it unloaded we're going to get it fed and we're going to show you the entire process along the way and show you the cost savings that buying feed this way makes for the ranch it's all coming up today on our wyoming life hi guys welcome back and thanks for continuing to explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary if this is your first time here please subscribe and be sure to hit that little bell button so you get notifications when new videos are released you can also check us out online at our wyominglife.com so i really hope that you enjoyed yesterday's episode where we got a chance to head over to dakota mills and buy our grain we also got a chance to look around and see what exactly goes into a grain elevator and what comes out the other side in the mill they kind of work together in that aspect before we get into today's episode and what we have going on i thought i'd catch up on a few things that are happening here around the channel and the big one this week is that we will not have a live stream on sunday on the beyond the ranch channel instead we're going to do it on saturday night at 7 00 pm so a little change of schedule there we've got something going on on sunday so we wanted to make sure we still got to do the live stream since we didn't do it last weekend due to grace's birthday so that will be saturday on the beyond the ranch channel at 7 p.m mountain time another thing even if you don't come to the live streams another thing that you're going to want to know about is the fact that last monday we did our monday morning meetup and that was a live stream here on our wyoming life and we talked about uh the upcoming ranch roundup which happens the first weekend in september over labor day weekend that's where we invite people to come to the ranch hang out and basically see you know just get a chance to to mingle around hang out with the animals meet aaron and i meet other subscribers moderators all kinds of cool fun stuff we're actually going to do a live stream in front of a live audience and we even have a chance to go down and take a little tour of the ranch and and have a picnic on the ranch as well that's coming up like i said on labor day weekend but we have a lot to do to prepare for that couple days so in order to do that we are actually going to take next week off we talked about it in last monday's meetup and we kind of gave you guys a choice on whether or not you wanted us to drop back and maybe just do a couple videos per week or if it was okay if we took the entire week off and of course everybody was very much uh pretty much in favor of taking the week off and then coming back the following week and continuing with the daily vlogs up until labor day weekend then we're going to go back to our regular schedule which is just two videos per week but that's still on the way so the basic gist of it is that this weekend live stream will be saturday night 7 p.m mountain time on the beyond the ranch channel then we're going to take next week off we will be back uh the following week on monday which would be what the 17th i think uh don't quote me on that but i think that's what it is and and then we'll be back enrolling into the daily vlogs up until the ranch roundup so that's kind of the plan for the next couple weeks here on the ranch for today we have a plan as well and that plan includes unloading all of the grain and the feed that we bought yesterday over in belfouse south dakota dakota mills and grain so the the trick is they're going to be getting the stuff off of our off of our trailer because as you noticed we loaded it up onto a dump trailer which means that we had to push each pallet on farther and farther we're gonna have to figure out how to get those off the back one's not gonna be any problem but we're gonna figure out how to get the other ones off also we have to figure out how we're going to feed this stuff and i've got a cool tool that hopefully i haven't used it before but we're going to give it a try we'll make that job just a little bit easier for us lots of questions over over the video though when we went and picked up the grain on the cost savings and how that will actually affect the ranch and if you've known in the past if you've been paying attention we've bought a lot of bagged feed now that was actually more convenient for us at the time because we could actually get that locally and not have to spend you know a whole day heading over to bell food picking up feed coming back and and doing it in bulk like that but really we've come down to seeing you know with with the economy the way it is with covid and everything else that's happening every dollar every every penny really makes a difference in the in the bottom line on the ranch so we're really trying to uh you know spread our wings and try some new things and one of those new things is buying feed in bulk and yesterday you got to come along for one of our very first forays into that into that world the cost savings actually might surprise you and we're going to take a look at those i've got them right here under my hat so this is my actual ticket from dakota mill and grain that i got yesterday after purchasing uh the the three tons of feed that we got so what i can do is i can actually break it down for you uh by by which type of feed that we got so we got a ton of cake um that's going to go out to the cows we got a ton of pig grower which will go to the pigs and then a ton of chicken food that's going to obviously go to the chickens what i did also to give us a really good comparison on what we're saving by buying feed in bulk like we are here is i called tractor supply this morning and i got prices for almost exactly what we have out there i couldn't get exactly dead on just because the mixtures and stuff like that but basically by going by what we would have been buying anyway so we'd be buying cake we'd be buying pig feed uh and pig grower and we'd be buying chicken feed so layer pellets is what we usually get so what i was able to do is break that down and kind of show the cost savings that we have between just buying it in bulk and buying it by the bag at tractor supply so cake we paid 319 dollars for that one ton of cake we also paid 20 for the bag so you do have to buy the bag you can reuse those so as long as you don't ruin them you can take them back they can refill them for you they just put your name on it so they are completely reusable and recyclable so that's a one-time fee but we're going to roll that in just to kind of make things fair for today so a total of 339 dollars for that ton of cake from dakota mill and grain that same ton of cake from tractor supply would have been 11.99 for a 50 pound bag for a total of 479 dollars so basically on cake we saved 140 by by buying it from them we're going to take a look at fuel costs a little bit later but really all i had was probably about 50 or 60 in fuel i think i actually put in 50 50 bucks worth of gas on the entire trip so that kind of you know gives you an idea what we're looking at there the pig feed which uh we paid 232 dollars at dakota uh when you roll in that bag for 20 bucks so say 252 uh that same pig feed pig grower we could have bought from tractor supply for 15 29 cents for a 50 pound bag for a total of 611 so that saves us 359 on the same amount of feed from uh from tractor supply that's insane that's that's a huge savings for the ranch and the chicken feed 232 dollars there a 252 with the bag from dakota mill and grain uh the lay pellets that that we would get from tractor supply 13.49 a bag so for a total of five 39.60 savings of 287. so our total bill uh from dakota milling grain uh minus tax i guess was for eight hundred and forty three dollars that same amount of feed purchased a minus tax from uh tractor supply would have been one thousand six hundred and thirty dollars and twenty cents a difference of 787 dollars almost 50 percent savings by going and doing this in bulk so this is something that i think will definitely benefit the ranch in the long run as long as we can keep doing it and then dakota mill and grain is located in belfoush and and it's still two hours away like i said a little bit of fuel cost but really once you start looking at the numbers it's kind of a no-brainer it's like why didn't we do this a long time ago really if you're looking at um even the the price on cake so we said 319 339 with the bag 479 at tractor supply so we're paying an extra 3.50 per bag for bagging for somebody to put in the bag for the for the for the paper that the bag is made of um all that kind of good stuff so and shipping cost of course so that's it's a big deal uh three extra 303.50 cents uh per 50 pounds that's adds up really really fast so again thanks to dakota milling grain for allowing us to come in and film there yesterday i think it was a pretty educational episode for most folks um today i have a feeling that it's gonna start out relatively easy we're gonna we're gonna jump in the in the skid steer we're going to move that back um that back ton of feed whatever it may be i'm not even sure we'll take a look and see what we've got there we're going to move that one off we're going to get that one put away i think that's going to be the easiest part i think what's going to happen here today is we are progressively our day is going to keep on getting harder and harder so there's really only so much procrastinating we can do sitting here talking about numbers and stuff like that but eventually we just have to get to work and it's not really a cool day out here the bree we do have quite a breeze going today and i think there's a storm on the way maybe um but uh so it's not a bad idea to get this stuff off of here but it's hot and uh and it's muggy so something uh two things we're not really used to here in in northeast wyoming but here is our here's our bags of feed this one really did end up leaning over i'm kind of a a little bit scared that one might flop over on us we'll find out once we take it off and hopefully we don't have any issues but we are going to get these bags off of here what am i tied up onto well that was smart i tied it to the bag um we're going to get these bags off of here we're going to see what we're dealing with and then figure out how we're going to get this fed one of these do need to go to the pigs right away they're actually out of food so they will be very happy to get some and i'll be happy to feed it to them all right let's jump up here and see what we've got here in this first bin i do believe that is our chicken food i just want to make sure that i get the right feed to the right animal oh no this is chicken feed this has lay pellets in it so this second one is actually our chicken feed first one there this is for pigs awesome with the gates open we can now grab the skid steer and we're gonna start getting this stuff off of here for those who have not yet gotten to drive the skids here i'll give you the quick lesson here basically pretty much just push buttons so we press the start button and away we go the one biggest trick that everybody forgets is you have to unlock everything before you go anywhere the lever over here this is how you steer back and forth forward backwards on your right side that one controls your forks or your bucket or whatever you have on the front for us it's forks because we're going to be picking up these pallets that the feed is on and hopefully not dropping anything so that's our pig food inside which is good now we're gonna run back out here and we're gonna see if we can get a pork on the uh the chicken food and get that moved back i don't know if we're gonna be able to reach it or not kind of doubt it but we'll try and see but rather than uh take this ton this chicken food and put it in the shop i actually have some place very special that i'm going to stash it away over here by the chicken house where we can feed it and it'll be close by won't have to be packing it all over the place and i actually have a pretty cool uh chicken feeder that i designed a few years ago that i'll show you as well that this feed will be going into so just take us a second to get over there one thing that absolutely amazes me is that i've been making videos for over three years now and nobody has ever asked me about this semi-trailer that sits over here by the chicken house i know people have seen it in videos you had to have but nobody's ever asked me about it and this is an old semi uh trailer obviously no running gear on it it's had some sort of uh collision you can see a big old dent up here in the front of it don't ask me what from something slammed around inside or something happened but either way made it the right price for us and in here uh we basically use this thing for storage in here is just a little bit of everything but uh i figure it's a good goodest place as any to keep this chicken feed out of the weather and dry also close by to the chicken house so that uh we can feed it right from here you can see there's just a bunch of junk in here there's some old netwrap or new net wrap actually that eventually we'll end up using a bunch of tomato cages some old furniture shelves down there at the end just random random junk but for now it's going to become a storage area for this bag of chicken food and here comes the boss hi it's a little windy so i'm going to stash the chicken food in here so we can grab buckets of it and then i was just getting ready to show everybody my super cool chicken feeder okay well we'll get everybody fed let me get the stuff taken off the trailer first okay okay or if you get a bucket i'll do it i got lots of buckets there's one up by your mom's yard that blew over there the other day okay thank you all right so this is uh the chicken feeder it's kind of my own design but basically and i think i'm gonna make another one so we'll probably make a video on how to make it it's really simple though i took a metal wash tub here cut it down drilled some holes in it put all thread through it and then took a garbage can cut out the bottom of the garbage can ran the all thread through the garbage can to hold it in place and then all you have to do is just fill it up with chicken food right now it's got lay pellets in it and then it's like an automatic dispensing chicken feeder we'll we'll we'll make another one i should make another one anyway so all right so let's get this put away and then we have one more ton of the ton of cake that we still have to get off of that trailer that's going to be a little tricky we'll figure out how to do that but for right now let's get this put away in here all right while you're doing that i'm gonna go get that cake off the trailer somehow back over here at the trailer we have a little bit of an issue and that is that we have a bag of cake all the way at the front of the trailer and a skid steer all the way at the back no way to reach so we're going to get a little creative here and and take a lesson from archimedes i guess and what we're going to do is we're going to try to get a chain around that pallet so that we can pull it straight back you know what i'm going to count this as a win of course we're only halfway through we've got them off the trailer but now what do we do well we have to figure out how we're going to feed this to cows and how we're going to get this to the pigs for that we're going to try using a brand new tool but i don't know if it's really a tool or not i guess it's what's called a fled bag easy not sure why it's fled bag but okay it's foreign i'm not even sure where it comes from i don't know what language that is austria there we go it's from austria and basically what this does is each one of these bags has a port for let's say on the bottom that you can lift these up you can open that pour it up on the bottom everything's going to drain right out quick way to fill up any type of bin or anything like that if you can get these bags up high enough and that's one of the problems that we have with our big pig feeder is that we don't have a tractor with enough lift to be able to get one of these big bags up high enough so that's where this is going to come in handy and what we're going to do is we are going to modify a pallet so that that port comes through the bottom of a pallet this thing goes on there and allows us to open this up feed comes out close it up and that stops the flow of feed that's the plan anyway we'll see if we can make it work first things first we need a pallet to start with and i wanted to pick a pallet that's in pretty good shape this one looks to be halfway decent what we're going to be doing is cutting a hole basically in the middle of this pallet framing that hole in in order to allow us to get that spout down and through so that's what we're starting with do do hey mike what did you do today well i made a pallet with a hole in the middle what a weird life we live all right so next up is to start out with the pig food here and basically we got to figure out how to lift it up set it down and make sure that everything lines up to make this happen there's really only one way i can think of and that's we're gonna have to lift up this bag slide the old pallet out put our new pallet in and then we're gonna have to figure out how to do this by ourselves but get everything lined up and set it back down tricky but not impossible so all right so here's that nozzle that we were talking about uh just a hole in the bottom of the bag so we got to get this to sit down inside of our donut this might not be that hard there it is hanging right down there from the bottom there's our spigot so we've got it pretty well centered this thing's a little precarious i can't say i love the idea i guess our next step is to head back to the pigs i can't say i really love this it's a little wonky but it'll work i hope well this is one of the more nerve-wracking things i've done in a long time basically all i have to do is get it untied and it should flow right in this one we don't have to use our gate our little valve deal because we're just letting it all go in almost so it looks like aaron's going to go ahead and put this whole thing back together for us while she does that we're going to figure out how we're going to handle cake and and how that's going to work for cake we pretty much do the same thing except for we don't have to take it to the pig pen which is nice and we don't even have to chase pigs today because aaron's taking care of it that'll make a lot of people feel better all right so we need to grab the cake here by the straps just like we did the other one take our donut pallet again in place it goes so you open up that part you bring in this okay long story short is this thing is not going to pick up itself so i've got to figure out how to how to do this so um i think we'll go back to chains and the skid steer here and try to try to lift it back up see if we can pull it back up maybe using these two straps in a chain and see if we can pull it out hmm all right so we can't pick it up without tearing the bag we still have our nozzle on this end so we can't if that comes off it's all gonna fall out this end now it's coming out this end so trying to figure out what to do here i've got a whole bunch of cake that's about ready to be just spilled all over the ground all right to get this thing off i'm gonna have to cut my nice new donut pallet which is actually already broken you can see so we're gonna cut through that we're gonna get that in thing off we're gonna try to close that end up there we go it's kind of like removing an accident victim from a car with the jaws of life you know what i'm saying there we go all right okay so we got this thing off and out i'll lose some cake there but that's not the end of the world okay okay we lost a little bit but not much all right i'm going to tie this off this bag's torn up and ruined anyway so i'm going to go ahead and tie this off what to do what to do now maybe we could come in with the bucket of the tractor and try to scoop it up and see if i can get to those handles maybe uh okay now we have access to all four straps so my hope is get the chain around all four straps and around the forks and lift it back up into a vertical type position okay we're somewhat upright i'm going to take the chain off and then we're going to try to get through the actual loops with the forks lift it up give it a little shake kind of balance things out and then i'm going to put it on another pallet a different palette because this one's destroyed well look at that we're right back where we started i got to say this is not how i saw today's video going honestly the ending would have been lifting this thing up using that cool little lever thing filling up the back of the gator with the cake and going down and caking the cows instead of the end of the video instead the end of the video is going to be me sweeping up cake and going and apologizing to aaron who apparently i ticked off somewhere along the line because i was annoyed and told her i didn't need her help you work by yourself so much and you get used to it and sometimes when you have help you don't know how to handle it i'm gonna go eat crow in the meantime remember saturday 7 p.m live stream no videos next week we're going to take the week off we're going to get ready for ranch roundup which is coming september 4th 5th and sixth labor day weekend you can come hang out on the ranch you can hang out with aaron and i and i promise i won't drop a bag of cake it wasn't a total failure of a day though we did get the pigs fed and the pigs are in erin got that done so not a total waste of a day but a long day to uh to say the least be sure to subscribe follow along as we continue to explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary trying things new learning our way around different ideas i can tell you that i probably am now thinking about some sort of gantry crane type thing to lift these up putting the nozzle on it and then being able to fill up the back of the gator that way uh probably be a lot simpler and a lot safer too so anyway thanks once again for hanging out with me and we'll see you next time which will be on august 17th right here on our wyoming life you

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 109,675

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching, bulk feed, one ton totes, livestock feed, the ranch

Id: IdPM0c_NP-A

Length: 38min 6sec (2286 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020