How Do We Feed 1300 Cows - Metcalfe Farms, Yorkshire Dales

[Music] you're making a lot of Cs they're indoors fulltime so feed is a huge part of the day getting that ready and having the right feed stuff yes yeah yeah it's a 12-hour day fading the cows starting at half 4 and we'll feed in order from which cows have come back to the Parlor so once the fresh cows and heers have been milked we'll be there with the mix ready for them to eat okay and then we'll just work behind the cows that are being milk so will she get fed twice a day then or how often will double feed yeah um just to keep intakes up and encourage them a bit more and also just to keep the feed a bit fresher um we find if we put sometimes we've had to feed them all in in the morning um especially if um say one of the lads has a Hospital appointment for example and needs to be there in the afternoon you know we've had it before where the feed's warming up it's we try and stick to it ideally yeah um so we're looking at your straights here is it yeah so bedding in the end bear and then we've got bread soy holes Nova Pro that bear is a premixed bear with everything Blended together and all your um all your little minerals and your bags and stuff and then high pro so on the end there okay that's your main protein source is it yes yeah okay so what are we looking at here then whole crop in there yeah uh we've got whole crop in the very top pit as well I think we usually produce between four and 5,000 tons of whole crop to feed them a year and then uh CTIC wheat at the end here okay it's quite a slope on your walls yeah we um we designed our pits like that we find it rolls in better on your shoulders uh and it's much safer as well for the rolling tra to to to not get wedged yes and grass silage in this pit yeah we're having a problem with it slipping uh it was very wet and it's just been a bit of a disaster really okay I've heard people say that this year with a multi- cut system yes that it's hard to keep it from not bridging yeah we'll do five cuts um and this happened last year as well and it was wet as well last yeah it's it's very hard to get it right really in terms of in the pit So when you say five Cs how many acres every time are you doing this year we've done about a thousand every cut every cut yeah yeah okay yeah right how long would that take you well just Texas just over a day I think right we have two Choppers working usually and two forage wagons sometimes up to three um shovels on the pit two or three okay usually two and one or two rolling tractors we're really try and get it in um as fast as possible with managing the pit not bringing it in too fast where they're not managing it properly but uh with other jobs to go to with a Contracting time puts a lot of pressure on the job am I right and saying the for C is the end of April for you yeah end of April we aim for um get get it off early and set ourselves up nicely um plenty of grass was available towards the end of this year I think for everybody up here really um and could have taken a sixth but uh we we've great someone else's shape on it so yeah I think I don't think we need the forage I think we've got enough and the tanks here what's in this uh left tank lactor boost which is like um a wear product with with something mixed in it uh sugar and stuff and then uh the right hand tanks we've got sedalco syrup that's just like a syrup similar to molasses yeah and then the machine itself here so you went s propelled Keenan we did yeah um what did you before that so we used a Mech fiber Keenan 400 and uh we were looking at other ways to feed our cows we thought about a static mixer and using either like a wagon um to dispense it yeah or a big or bucket and uh just by chance dad happened to stumble across the self-propelled option and we bought a self-propelled and it just didn't quite fit our system so we spoke to Kanan and they just bought this self they their version of a self-propelled out so we placed an order and then this is our second ke and so in six years we've had three self-propelled machines okay we put in maybe six or 7,000 hours on across two years so we we change them every two years right it's about the time they need a AR ray line so we tie that in with just renewing them so you're you can discharge in a couple of points here can you yeah you can discharge down either side we reverse into the passage and feed out forwards we don't have a feeding belt um just to we've had bad experiences with them in the past snapping right when you need them or um so we keep it simple two doors each side yeah and then at the back there there's a premix door so you load all your straights in and your bags right and then uh you reverse into your premix Bay and drop it out the back door okay you don't have to shove it with the bucket it uh just keeps it very yeah very quick and simple yeah yeah what capacity is it it's a 33 cubic meter uh capacity machine yeah um it's about 265 horsepower and uh it self loads and mixes from you know from the clamps to the the cows really does it um has it save time feeding cows compared to a conventional tractor and definitely yeah um it saves a lot of time really you're not getting off your seat to get back on the tandler and it's just much more efficient so you know you're into your silage then you're onto your whole crop for example you're not you haven't got a bucket full of silage that you need to take back to tip out yeah um and then you've taken your whole crop and then you've got a bit that you need to take back to your whole crop clamp you bringing the machine with you everywhere you go as such yeah and uh you're also not racking up hours on two machines and you know if you're going around with your tan LA loing and you've just got your tractor sat still turning a PTR you're clocking hours up the same amount of hours up on two machines and I'd say we've probably hared our Telly Handler hours um with getting the self-propelled but also we found that our T handler was a lot more available for other farm work so yeah those hours that doesn't really reflect the hours that we're serving because we need we don't need as many T handlers how many t t handlers have you in the bit larger ones up down here we only have the one yeah uh farming total we have three okay but we do have a lot of building jobs on and stuff and constant maintenance which we need them for um steel work and stuff pallets wagons um the harage as well and uh but down here on the farm we only have the one whereas before we had two so so diets and stuff like that then is that say sent bya the cloud to this yeah it's all uh cloud-based software and it's sent over um there's a small SIM card in that that box and everything sent over the cloud automatically so and all groups identified then and diet associators yeah everything's all the diets are on the on the cloud all the groups are set up on the cloud so all the operator has to do is turn the box on and all of his diets are there and all the groups are there everything's done for him beforehand uh it all had to be done on paper and if you lost your paper or it's a lot better for record keeping I see is knives in that then for or how do you know for yeah when it's rotating it's a stainless steel drum with uh lots of knives attached and it breaks the silage out of the clamp and uh behind there's a org that moves it towards the belt and then everything's thrown onto the belt and loaded I see quite simple um and effective really I see no impressive needs to be right and it's a busy machine [Music]

Channel: Grasstec Group

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Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2024