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bazza20
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
sorry dont really agree with ya there foxleigh. In North Vic have had to try many ways of feeding cows over these drought years and the mixer was the best way by a mile to get get cows to eat feed rather than sorting it and any feed, natural and unnatural.
As for mixers only being good for unnatural feeds. Its been pretty well proven that everything else being equal a well mixed feed will give you better feed conversion efficiency, higher DM intakes and a more stable rumen which usually leads to higher components.
pretty obvious the negatives are the extra cost and time to mix feed, but you just do the figures and see if it suits you. Weve found with high feed costs its hasnt taken much savings for the mixer to be a very good investment.
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16/7/2009, 8:44
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foxleigh
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Tub mixers, what do you have?
weve done the numbers and it doesnt suit our system.I know of others in northern vic who have gotton rid of mixer wagons and found that they got a life back because they didnt spend all day mixing feed.also with current low milk prices it may no longer be a cost effective option to buy in as much feed as some do.
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16/7/2009, 11:55
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bazza20
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
foxleigh, never said they were going to suit everyone. Just pointing out that there are many more advantages to mixer wagons than using them for so called unnatural feeds.
trust me i know all about the time needed to mix feed. i sat on the mixer almost every day for about 6-7 months. But if i wasnt on the mixer i would have still been feeding out hay anyway which when we timed it took longer than we thought.
and you cant say doing bucket fulls of silage and spreading it with a pitch fork isnt gonna be time consuming either. especially with large herds, it just wouldn't be feasible here.
Other thing is we get much less wastage with the mixer as well and pretty much no mater what happens we will be feeding a lot of hay again this year whether its our own or bought in it dosnt taken much savings to start making money.
trust me i would much rather not have the mixer here. I keep doing the figures hoping they will tell me im better of to get rid of it but it keeps coming out better of.
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16/7/2009, 23:29
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foxleigh
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
quote:
foxleigh wrote:
we have a bucket and loader and put buckets of corn silage into trough ,spend 20 minutes spreading ti with a pitch fork and then unroll 2 rolls of haylage over it with a big foot feed out machine.......
cows do their own mixing!
we put 8 front end loader buckets in our trough at intervals and I can have it all spread out evenly by the time the tractor is shut off.the haylage is spread in the time it takes to drive 160 metres.It takes the cows approx 1 hr to clean up and there is no waste.
like I said suits us and as my husband says he has his 20 minute daily gym work out in the trough!saving more time and money!
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17/7/2009, 21:23
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bazza20
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
foxleigh, as i have said all along i have no problem with that system working for you at all. It obviously does. Every farm is different and different systems can work on different farms. Just because the mixer doesnt suit your system doesnt mean it wont work on others.
I just didnt agree with the comment that mixers are only good for feeds that cows werent meant to eat, because there is much more to them than that.
Last edited by bazza20, 18/7/2009, 2:06
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18/7/2009, 1:59
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foxleigh
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Tub mixers, what do you have?
last week we had to drop off a tank for a et vet at a large riverina herd that from what I have read was a high ABV ,high milk ,grass based holstein herd and from what I saw by the cows on the yard high type too.
I hadnt met these people before but talking about the weather led to coping and he offered to give us his tub mixer!.He claimed all it did was cost him money!and time He claimed there was no improvement in production,no inprovement in body condition and no improvement in fertility.
because we had a school bus to meet and he had a milker to help we didnt have time to really get down to the nitty gritty and the whys .But the next time I see him I shall enquire further.
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1/8/2009, 21:18
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bazza20
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
They definatly need good managment to work properly.
Just looking through our records for last year. We managed a few pick ups with over 5% fat while using the mixer.
Also had the bloke out that sold us the mixer to show a few people ours. Had a chat with him and said mixers are walking out the door at the moment which i even thought was a bit strange.
Just read a few studies the other day that both had up to 30% increased feed conversion effecency when mixing feed. now you just have to work out weather the extra milk justifies the extra cost. Our nutritionst tells us some people love there mixer and some hate them. The ones that hate them usually arent set up right for them and think that they will magically turn crap feed into gold.
He told us of one bloke that had some really bad silage almost rotten. then blamed the mixer when the cows didnt milk well when he mixed the silage with his other feeds. Its always case of garbage in garbage out. the mixer wont turn bad feed into good stuff.
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17/8/2009, 22:30
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Boyd34
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
Redrock tub theres nothing better, forget paddle feeders.
Of course if you like trouble, bother etc go get a paddle one.
We've had both trust me!
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9/10/2009, 22:44
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carndreen
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Re: Tub mixers, what do you have?
what size of redrock tub do you have? would maybe thinking of buying one other hand maybe a redrock paddle
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10/10/2009, 7:18
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