Consolidated Kansas

[tlzimmerman]

Of course wearing out quickly is a relative term. What I think of as quickly you might think of as a long time. I wouldn't think a chunk would be from the dies wearing out, but I could be wrong I have never operated a pellet mill for a long time, just been around them some. When they wear out I think the pellet mill just produces much less throughput and gives you a inferior finished pellet. I think most dies and the press rollers have to be replaced every 200-500 hours though, depending on what you are making.

I do know new dies aren't cheap though.

 

[Dani4Hedgies]

Yes yes yes ALL Broodies are on the correct nest keeping their eggs warm with a steel broody glare going on. These ladies mean business they are going to turn those little eggs into peeping loving chicks. Everyone thank you for crossing everything now its time to play the wait game....will post when chicks appear.

 

[HEChicken]

In the post I was saying that I could buy pelleted alfalfa instead of bales and then grinding it, but that is more expensive.

But yes....pelletizing is not a cheap endeavor, it adds a lot of cost to feeds. The dies in a pelletizer wear out quickly and must be replaced, you have fuel costs, grinding costs, costs to maintain all the equipment to move the material into and out of the pelletizer, not to mention the capitol investment of the machine itself.

You can buy good alfalfa hay for say $150 or $200/ton, pellets are usually $300/ton plus.

Gotcha - thanks for taking the time to explain. I would think then that taking a pelleted alfalfa and grinding it would be undoing the expensive part. I buy alfalfa pellets to feed to my sheep and goats and they eat them just fine. I offered them to my birds, who are used to a pelleted feed, but they weren't too popular. Mine do free-range all the time though so perhaps they just prefer to find their greens the old-fashioned way.

That's good to know about the pelletizer. My local COOP makes their own layer pellets & sometimes they get big chunks in the feed, now I know why if the dies wear out fast.

Yeah I noticed that the one time I drove down to get feed from your co-op as well. It was very dusty feed and then there were the big chunks that were a waste as they were too big for the birds to eat. I wound up going back to the pelleted feed I get from my feed store as between the drive to go down there and then finding a lot of waste in the food itself, it wasn't any cheaper, even though the initial price per bag was lower.

Of course wearing out quickly is a relative term. What I think of as quickly you might think of as a long time. I wouldn't think a chunk would be from the dies wearing out, but I could be wrong I have never operated a pellet mill for a long time, just been around them some. When they wear out I think the pellet mill just produces much less throughput and gives you a inferior finished pellet. I think most dies and the press rollers have to be replaced every 200-500 hours though, depending on what you are making.

I do know new dies aren't cheap though.

I probably won't ever be able to do my own feed. My problem is I have a small goat herd, a small flock of sheep, and about 100 birds. A few cows, a horse. Not enough of any one species to be worth doing a big lot of feed at any one time. And then of course there is storage on top of that. So as much as I hate doing bagged feed, I think that's probably my lot in life.

We seen to have hit the sweet spot where the days get long enough to trigger most birds to lay. I went from getting only a few a day through December and January to a huge increase Saturday and Sunday and then got 50% more again today. It is time to start thinking about separating a couple of breeding groups so I can collect their eggs for hatching.

 

[chicken danz]

I looked at pelletizers and grinders a few years ago. Thinking I could produce a pellet and save feed. But the overall cost and labor made me change my mind. Once you make pellets you have to have an area to dry them. It would take so much area and then there's always the danger of attracting rodents which really turned me off. I keep my eyes open for a grinder but so far haven't found one close enough or at a price I felt was reasonable.

 

[tlzimmerman]

Excited to see your chicks Dani.

 

[Dani4Hedgies]

Tlzimmerman thanks me too I have quite the mixed flock so no idea what Im going to get so its a super double surprise

 

[Trish44]

@HEChicken it doesn't happen but once in awhile that the pellets don't come out right. I doesn't matter to me since I'm doing FF anyway, but I'm sure it does to a lot of people. I noticed that some of the corn didn't get ground up in my scratch this time. The birds can't eat the whole corn so it just goes to waste. This is the first time I have seen that, so I don't know if they had a problem in the grinder or what. Usually I get one batch that is like that & then by the time I go back in a month it's fixed. It's just a small COOP but it's more convenient for me than having to drive further to go to the Ark City COOP. It's not really easy to get to theirs either so I don't go there unless I have to. The store we had in Winfield closed so we have to drive a bit further outside of town, but it's right across the highway from where my DH works so usually he just takes the truck & gets it on his way to work.

Thanks to friends in Marion I now have 10 more female guinea fowl for breeding. I had a hard time filling my orders for keets last year so I really needed some more females to lay for me. I have plenty of males because I have all of my extras out in the yard running free to keep ticks under control. I have 4 males in my breeding pen but if I needed more I could always trap one of the ones outside in my chicken run where they go to eat. They are the craziest & meanest birds ever but boy do they control the ticks. We had them just horribly bad before I got guineas. We couldn't even go outside without getting them all over us. Now we don't see many around where the guineas range & that's nice.

 

[Dani4Hedgies]

Day 18 report on hatching sadly when checking on everyone in their nest discovered a smashed chick still mostly in its egg under Limpy not sure what happened. fly free little angel chick until we meet again...


And checked on eggs in incubator and 4 appear to be in great condition so hopefully they will hatch and hopefully the rest of Limpy babies will hatch just fine.

 

[rlh1]

We have a few pips going on under Opal, hear we go!

Does anyone close to me (I am in Carbondale, about 20 min south of Topeka) have an incubator that I might borrow in a few days for about a week? I think my broody silkie has decided she doesn't want to be broody anymore. She was not sitting on developing eggs BUT some of the eggs under Opal are not ready to hatch and won't be for at least a week. I was planning on putting those eggs under Pinky and letting her finish them out.

I'm still new at this and I didn't realize that some of the other hens were laying their eggs in opals nest. SO, now I have to come up with a plan B

Any help would be great! I'll even bring the eggs to you...

 

[rlh1]

I'm sorry to hear that. We had kinda the same thing happen the other day. It's so sad.