Whats in your LIVESTOCK FEED? Grinding our own feed

[Music] same day again here on the farm I just wanted to talk a little bit about well it's something I've had quite a few requests for sorry my neighbor's dog here thanks he's my dog I believe but anyways everybody's been wanting to know about our feed and what we feed our cows and our hogs and as you've heard and several of my previous videos you'll know that we grind our own feed and it's all made right here on the farm but I thought I'd talk about it today now I'm not gonna be grinding any I'm just going to show you what we do and I'm going to show you the feed and I'm gonna show you what I'll talk about what all we put in it now when you come down to numbers I'm not really going to talk about that either I do believe it is cheaper to grind your own feed especially if you have the grain available to you and we buy we do buy our corn now our corn used to be raised here on the farm and go home but I just wanted to kind of talk about it like I said the corns not raised here on the farm anymore I mean I'm not saying we ain't gonna plant any more corn but at the moment it's just cheaper it works out better for us to buy our corn from a local guy he's a good family friend and he can pretty much sell us our corn cheaper than we can raise it so that's what we do but it's uh we will add like minerals and molasses and some salt and calcium and stuff it just depends on what type of feed for grinding so to get it started here I'm going to show you what we what we use and what I have this is an old hammer meal we've got it hooked up to the old 4010 John Deere which is about a 90 horsepower tractor and that's about all this tractor gets used for anymore it's it's got a couple of quirks about it but it still does a good job about grinding feet and this like I said this is a Massey Ferguson feed mill or hammer mill or whatever you want to call it does a great job we actually picked this thing up for about 500 bucks a couple years well probably been five or six years ago now used to we took our feed down to a local meal and had them grind it for us and when we come across this it just it just worked out better for us because I mean we can grind feed any time of day we want to whenever don't matter what's going on you know if we need feed we can grind our feet but that's our setup there that's what does all the work you take in litter your swing this off this shoot out right here you'll swing that out and let it lower it down and the corn will go right up through here the corn or the whatever you're throwing in it will add some wheat will add some soybeans really just depends on what we've got here to put in it then down through there it'll come out that auger and run down through there and there's a metal or like a magnet strip right here that'll catch any metal before it goes into the hammer meal in the actual hammer meal part it's right down in there and that's what does the chopping and grinding of the feed now you can change out the screen which is inside this box are you lift this lid up and they are these screens which right now it's got the one we use for our cow feed in it but you replace this right here and all that does is allow it see how this one's got small holes in it the one that's in there right now has big in it and that just pretty much defines how I guess you would say how fine the the corn and everything you put in there's ground up so we use this one for our hog feed and the one that we use for a cow feed is similar to the one behind it there however the holes are slightly bigger and I'll show you our cow feed right now we'll talk about what I would put in it so this this here is our cattle feed this guide you can see the corn in there how some of us not even busted up but there's also hay in it we put these all-purpose minerals right here from southern states in it then we've got our dried molasses that goes in it and that's basically all it goes in our cow feed it's not it's not like this scientific mixture it's just a it's just basic corn hey and then these minerals and the the molasses the molasses pretty much just gives a little better taste and well this gives a little sweetness and flavor to it and that's it so there's nothing special about the cow feed at all now we will if we have some soybeans available we'll add soybeans into it or we'll add some wheat into it and when we add something like that will either put it in down here to shoot all will just pour it straight directly into this then once you get it full or however much you want ground you can look at these numbers here and that'll tell you how many thousand pounds you've got in there so right there'd be a thousand two thousand three thousand and so on but it'll all come out that augur right there you turn that on separate it don't run the whole time the meals running but it'll come out that auger and then we sack it we lower this auger down and we'll sack it right out of the chute of the auger layer into like 50 pound sacks or whatever just to get it to where our calves are now when we do our hog feed it's a little different will uh we'll still grind corn and actually by the way right here is the corn if you're wondering how we get our corn we go fill up this wagon here and don't quote me on this but I want to say this wagon holds around 600 bushels or so I can't and that's pull them to the top full but you can see right there it's quite a bit of corn in there right now I do know that we can fill up this wagon for roughly at the market price of corn right now and that's how that guy sells it to us is pretty much at market price but we can fill up that wagon for about 900 bucks and that $900 of corn will last us quite a while I don't know if you guys buy feet or not but you know that $900 buy quite a bit of feed too however we know what's in this feed you know it's corn it's our molasses right there and our minerals and like I said you know a lot of people stress about how you eat to feed yourself and know what you're eating well I kind of want to do our livestock the same way so that's another reason we grind our feed because there's a local feed meal up the road here that's their big there it's a big outfit and they run gosh I think they ship feed all up and down the east coast and they well let's put it this way I'm not gonna make name no names I'm not gonna say anything about them because they do feed all over but you know I know some truck drivers work for them and I know what gets put in that feed and to me is stuff that livestock shouldn't be eating right and that's that's all I'm gonna say so like I said this way we know what's in our feed we do it like this we know exactly what we're feeding our cows and our Peaks so get back talking about the hog feed now when we do the hog feed it's similar to this however it's ground-up finer you don't see none of those large chunks in the hog feed now our hog feed is basically corn and then we'll put a soybean meal which I don't have any of this here right now because we don't have Peaks right now we still haven't got them in yet but like I said our feed is basically corn shelled corn soybean meal which we don't add much you know to about 2,000 pounds of feet of corn we ground it's about we'll put about three bags of soybean meal which is 150 pounds you know that's not a lot but then we also put salt and calcium in the minerals and stuff and like that into our hog feed - now you do remember that you know everything we feed our hogs we're just trying to boost them up and get them to grow pretty much as quick as we can without actually feeding them anything or pumping them up with hormones and stuff like we don't do that but we do you know feed them corn and everything and now you'll see more on that when we actually get our peach and we're actually grinding some feed for the peaks but you know it's it once again it's not rocket science it's just pretty much corn ground with all the necessity minerals that our hog needs like I said we'll put the soybean meal in there just to kind of boost the feet up and I mean like I said the salt in the calcium in the minerals and that's about it and we do use the same minerals that's right here we'll use that in our hog feed as well and it just as it works and it's worked that way for years you know the way we do our feet is the same way that my daddy done it the same way that his daddy done it and the same way that his daddy done I mean it's been done this way for years and it's worked and we keep doing it so you know like I said sooner or later there will definitely be some videos made on using this thing here and I think I found me a new friend here what do you think I believe he's took up with me I don't know maybe you don't get enough attention at all but we will definitely be videoing this thing I just wanted to talk about today because it's weird out here we haven't been able to do much it's I've got a ton of work I need to do but it's just too nasty to do it so that's doing this video here kind of I wanted to bring up that one point that I did say you know the knowing what you feed your animals I think it's just important as important as knowing what you feed yourself because pretty much whatever goes into that animal is going to go into you so if you are feeding your I mean you know I know if you don't have the means to do this then you know I understand if you you know you don't have no other option but to by your feet that's just part of it however if you do have the means to grind your own feed and make your own feed by all means do it like I said we picked this thing that for 500 bucks I know you may not always find a deal like that but it was kind of like a word-of-mouth thing and we heard about it and he'd been sitting for probably 10 or 15 years actually and just so happen we got lucky with it I guess but you know I keep an eye on Craigslist and you can see these things you can find them quite often this is a bigger one they don't need to be that big they made small ones that you can pull behind smaller tractors this one I'll just flat out grind some feed pretty much I mean either do it in a hurry but like I said it's what we come across and you know if we to come across a smaller one then that's probably what we'd about cause we could have used a smaller but anyways you know it's it's nice to know what you're feeding your animals it really is and that way you know your animals are getting what's best for them and you know I know how this corn was raised I know exactly how it was grown and it's just something something to think about if you're going to have animals like I said we have probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cows so it takes a lot of feed to keep those things going through the winter and we don't have enough pasture land to really keep the grass up so we do we do feed them aid they get fed about they get fed this feed about three times a week during the winter months and then dip them and then some months we cut back to about one time a week just to kind of keep them gentle and keep them tame and of course they get hay too but you know like I said it's just something I'm one dimension I want to talk about you will see more of it when we get our Peaks but as always I appreciate you watching and I hope you consider subscribing to the channel if you want to see more on this kind of stuff I just want to make a quick video today about about feed and talk about it just a little bit because I've had a whole lot of questions and so maybe this'll this'll at least get started answering some of those questions on you know we'll talk more about it when we actually do some grinding but always like I said thanks for watching and we'll catch you on the next one

Channel: Lawson Lawn And Farm

Views: 182

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Livestock feed, grinding feed, cow feed, hog feed, hammer mill, massey ferguson hammer mill, whats in your feed, feeding healthy

Id: XiF0aNH9RNQ

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020