Feed mill questions...

[milkmaid]

Anyone here have experience with feed mills? This is totally not up my alley at all.

So I'm headed to a 50,000 hd feedlot in a few weeks and the consulting DVM recommended reading up on feed mills before coming, since these folks have recently built a new one. I've avoided the feeding side of the business in favor of animal health and data, and its obviously coming back to bite me. Google isn't overly helpful... anyone with experience willing to give me some basics? How they run, different types, intelligent questions to ask, etc? If you know of any useful websites I'd certainly be interested in that as well.

Thanks!

 

[M5farm]

Sound like its out of my league with 50k head. My experience is with what we call a feed mill that is ran off of a tractor pto that grinds around 60 to 70 bushels. Search for gehl feed mill although they make commercial ones there should be some videos on the smaller ones. It all the same principle the hammers crush the corn,oats,grains to a specific size determined by the screens. And auger is in the middle of the bin that pulls the ground feed up and distributes it out the top that how the feed is mixed together. You determine the percentages of each ingredient to achieve the ration your looking for. Texas bred can give you the mixture basics.

 

[M5farm]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcJMond7UHg http://www.crusher-mills.com/en/milling ... -mill.html

 

[TexasBred]

MilkMaid in the past I've done some consulting work for feed mills but never actually worked inside a mill. Might be able to help you if you have some specific questions relative to feed ingredients, formulations, mixing, etc.

 

[milkmaid]

Thanks M5!

TB- going to send you a PM.

 

[KYFarmKid]

I started working in a feed mill this summer with no previous experience. We mix on average we bag about 10-12 tons of feed a week most of in it for swine. It was all pretty easy to pick up on the fly. The biggest thing for me was learning where all the ingredients were stored. From there it was just reading a diet sheet, weighing out each ingredient and putting it into the mixer. Certain diets take more work then others, I would assume at a feedlot all the diets would be straight forward and in bulk (so you don't have to worry about bagging it all out). Hope your experience in the feed mill goes as smooth as mine has! Good luck!