We house 200 cattle from calves up to finnished in modern buildings.We place round bale silage infront of feed barriers then our own rolled barley mixed with rolled beans and minerals into troughs and on top the silage

This is a simple system and has always suited us well but as cattle numbers have increased and labour reduced we find that the bagging of barley very time consuming.

 .Does anyone know of a way to improve the bagging of our barley ration out of our alvan blanche millmix or a way of eliminating bags from system.

 We have thought of using a walthambury type potato bagger weigher to speed things up but don't know if it would work with rolled barley!

Any ideas would be appreciated.Thanks.

with 200 cattle id be wanting nothing to do with bags if i could help it, i have a family member has about the same number of cattle and spends all day carrying 25kg bags about. i dont really have alot of knowledge of cattle but would one of them mixer wagons be better?

would an automatic system be better? build a hopper that holds a set amount next to your millmix then get an auger to pull it through to the catttle troughs, it wont be free to set up but will mean you can feed a hell of a lot more cattle without doign very much at all if tis set up right.

we have have something similar in the link below for contract pigs which works well and has been going for nearly 20 years without too much trouble (touch wood)

http://www.eb-equipment.com/agricultural.asp?t=Conveying&p=8

get an auger bucket on the manitou, feed them in 5 mins, no sweat exuded.

bags are for the museum

Bags for the museum west of england sacks are worth a bit

Hi Stickweld, If you had a side tip grain bucket on the back or front it may be an economical option. Even if it didn't tip, the guy formally on the bags could scoop it out. But then you cant take a tractor where you can take a bag?

With a user name like yours, maybe you could fabricate something in-house and customise it to your own needs?

 try and get away from bags! we had 2 mobile feedmix units and bags were so time heavy compared to bulk drop. i solution to your problem could be a flexible auger system to carry you ration along your  feed pass and construct a hopper system to dump your feed at 1 time.

also a bucket on your loader would be a cheaper solution to your feeding requirements its all depends on how much money you want to spend and if its a short term fix or something for the long term.

I mix feeding with tractor bucket on floor then fill pig barrow and hand bucket feed into troughs . Its quick and cheap – no bags . Have a hopper I can fill if tractor is not there to fill barrow. Feed 120 calves twice a day -