Corn clobberer

Remember these guys? Ugh. I do. These are the feed sacks of corn that we had filled up after picking and shelling them. We have about 7 of them, all weighing in around one hundred pounds. Whew! We've been busy.

This past weekend we decided that we had enough to finally grind it up so that it can be used as feed for our little baby moo-cows. They like corn. It has a lot of protein in it and when it is ground up, it is easier for them to digest.

So James and his dad pulled out a piece of equipment I had never seen before. It was a strange contraption that attached to the rear of the tractor. They called me out to see it in action.

As the tractor ran a long pipe spun around, providing power to the rest of it. James and his dad would hoist the hundred pound bags up onto their shoulders and dump them into a funnel-type of thing. The corn would fall down towards a rotating blade, the thing of nightmares and it suddenly made sense why so many farmers are missing fingers.

The blades rotated around, feeding the corn down into the machine at a rapid rate. It was ground up and a long spiral inside of a pipe fed it up and out of a spout, which was placed over a steel drum, to catch the final product. The drum filled up fast. Corn dust flew everywhere and covered everything within feet of the machine. It was loud, but efficient. We went through all 700+ pounds of corn, two steel drums, in about 20 minutes. All of the hard work, out in the fields in the freezing cold, and in the basement working up a sweat hand cranking the sheller, over and done with in 20 minutes. Now I know they make machines to do that other stuff - the picking and shelling.

After we had everything ground up we tried it out! We mixed up our little baby cow's dinner for them. Some of our ground corn, a "pasture extender" feed, and distiller's grain - which we had picked up from a grinding, feed, store type of place. Lucky for us, the distiller's grain has a lot of protein and is a by-product of all the bourbon and beer making in the area. We stirred it all together to make a nice little calf casserole and Voila! Dinner was served!

Our little cows chowed down on their new feed. They approved. We had done all this work by hand, just for them. It definitely makes you appreciate the technology that has come to replace all of this freezing, cranking, picking, throwing, shelling, etc. All for the cows. They better 'preciate!

So there you have it, the beginning to end of how we have homegrown and hand made cow feed!