[AT] More on weighing feed ingredients v. metering

[Greg Hass]

The views expressed here are my own and may not reflect the views of others 
on the List. Other views are welcome.
This post will cover more on one method v. the other.

A 4-hopper metering mill is what I have.  When I bought it there was a 
separate metering section for trace minerals but I never purchased that 
attachment.  I think the answer to the whole question boils down to just 
one word..."volume".  I grew up when most things were done by volume.  When 
it came time to feed grain to the dairy cows, we had several sizes of pails 
such as a 10-qt., a 12-qt. and a 15-qt.  The size of the pail used depended 
on the amount of milk a cow gave.  The more milk, the larger a pail of 
grain she received.  When we fed corn silage we would take a heaping silage 
tub and divide that between 2 cows.  For hay, each cow would receive 
x-number of slices out of a square bale.  (Each bale contained about 16 
slices.)   When we were switching over to beef cattle we used a feed 
grinder with a bagger on it which bagged all the ground feed, so that was 
handled in bags.  As the silage went down the conveyor, we would dump in 
x-number of bags per pen of cattle.

  After I was in the hogs a while, I went to this meter mill.  Back when 
all of the grain came off the farm, volume was a fairly consistent way of 
measuring.  At this time, I fed all of the grain I raised to beef cattle 
and bought all of the feed for the hogs.  This is where the problem came 
in.  There is a wide variation in what a bushel of corn will weigh when 
bought from our local elevators.  For instance, this past fall when I 
thrashed my corn and delivered it to the elevator it averaged <1% FM. 
(foreign matter = broken kernels, pieces of cob, etc.)   However, when corn 
is purchased, it usually contains 20% FM.  Although all elevators in the 
area deny it, the farmers all know that when they ship out train cars full 
of corn, this corn is all milled and all of the junk milled out, goes into 
the corn bins containing the corn being sold back to local farmers.  This 
is where all of the fines (broken pieces of corn and hulls of kernels), 
etc., come from.  Because the corn is sold back to us by weight, we cannot 
make a case in court that we are being "cheated".   Because corn with all 
this trash in it fluffs up, it weighs less per bushel by volume and throws 
off the accuracy of our mix.  Even with soybean meal, I have had as much as 
6-lbs. variance in a 5-gal. pail due to the density of the meal.

The rest of my answer goes back to "volume", only with a different 
definition.  Meaning, due to the "larger" volumes today, volume measurement 
doesn't work, ie. a bushel of grain, a gallon of gas, a barrel of oil, a 
bag of cement.  When I was a kid you filled a tractor with a 5-gal. 
pail.  Now when tractors hold up to 300 gal., no one is going to measure it 
with a 5-gal. pail.  My cousin sells 10,000 head of fat cattle/year.  These 
cattle are fed with feed trucks which are loaded with big payloaders.  The 
trucks are equipped with digital scales on the side of the box which can be 
read by the loader operator and he dumps in the ingredients by 
weight.  Obviously on a scale like that, you cannot dump in so many pails 
of grain or tubs of silage.  Even with hay, their feed trucks are capable 
of taking in and chewing up a whole round bale at a time, which makes it 
hard to count slices.  And the final nal in thecoffin for volume 
measurement (correct me if I'm wrong)  are laws to the effect that weight 
must be used.  When the elevator sells to me, the trucks must pass over a 
scale.  They cannot sell by bushel.  They MUST go by weight.  I had a 
relative in the gravel business who used to load trucks by the 
bucket.  However, at least here in Michigan, now all gravel must be 
weighed, and even cement palnt must use computerized batching equioment to 
get the right ingredients in the cement.  Even the water must be 
weighed.  My cousin in his feedlot has several pens of cattle which are 
custom-fed for other individuals, and he must be able to show by weight how 
much the cattle have been fed.  He can't just say they get 5 payloader 
buckets of silage and 2 of grain.

I hope my "rambling" has cleared things up a bit.

Greg Hass