[AT] More on weighing feed ingredients v. metering

Ralph Goff alfg at sasktel.net
Wed Mar 23 18:26:12 PST 2005


In the grain farming business we have always dealt with weight when selling
or buying grain. The simple reason is that a bushel of grain can vary
tremendously in weight depending on the crop year. Normally our hard red
spring wheat should weigh 60 pounds per bushel although I have seen 64 in a
good year. This past year with severe frost damage in August has produced
wheat that has a bushel weight ranging from 55 to less than 40 pounds per
bushel. The big semis can pile their hoppers up full and still not worry
about being overweight most of the time with this junk. A trailer that holds
1000 bushels of good quality grain might only hold 900 (or less) of this
light frozen grain.
Same thing for seeding. I have always planted a crop at x number of pounds
per acre. Charts on the seeding equipment is all listed in pounds per acre.
When it comes to feeding cattle and chickens I do fall back on the volume
measure. The big feed tub holds about all I want to carry so thats how much
gets put in each feeder. A bale and half of hay usually completes their meal
for the evening although if its light weight or poor looking hay I might
throw a few fork fulls of better quality out to compensate. Life is too
short and beef is not worth enough to get that fussy about measures at this
stage of the game.

Ralph in Sask.
http://lgoff.sasktelwebsite.net/

----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Hass <gkhass at avci.net>
To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 6:14 PM
Subject: [AT] More on weighing feed ingredients v. metering


> 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
>
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