Part time farming - Time saving techniques

I know there's other threads on the portable meal bins but I still reckon your better off with a bin. You'll stoop down into those portable bins and pull a bucket of meal out of them. Not great on the back. I know carting buckets of meal to outfarms etc isn't ideal but a better job imv. You can get 2-3 tonne blown in and forget about it then for a couple of months of your not feeding much.

it’s a fine bin. The tilt thing is a waste of time.

Better off with more space at the angle piece and have access for another 100kg of feed.

What form do the minerals take? Licks? Do you give during winter or all year round?

We just fill with a scoop out of the bin, we measure by the scoop anyway when feeding e.g. this group gets 15 scoops so count it out every time and into bags. Pulling a bucket out of the bin would be a killer on the back for sure.

The silo would be grand in the winter but we give meal to stores all summer and we move the bin around with them which is so handy, especially as I often walk to do the herding (as it’s better for the bit of exercise) so bringing meal from the yard would mean bringing the tractor every day and take longer with opening gates and electric fences.

Use multi min during the summer on stores or yearlings. Stores not going for finish before mid summer get it 4-6 weeks after turn out. Yearlings the same with a second shot later in the summer. Anything bought in before September gets a shot unless the bottle is empty. However I do not think it's as good as bagged minerals. I used bagged minerals during the winter. Feeding about 66-7kgs per days at present to about 100 stores and weanling and about 3-4 kgs of limestone flour.

If collecting even middling quanties( 3+ ton) you need somewhere to tip store it. It needs to be bird/ vermin proof and you need to be able to tip a trailer into it. Collecting ration is not the end of the matter.

When̈ I first started farming I use to buy bags and had them stored in bins. I was throwing the bags in an old house. I drove into tge old yard one dark night to a few rats scurrying around. I lad to poison them and get a bin for the bags as well.

I can only imagine the problem if tipping straights or lorry loads of ration into a non vermin proof shed. Even at that I doubt if you bargained that there would be a 15-20 euro charge for loads over 6-10T especially if you were within 5-7 miles of a miller. There is no way they are charging 1-200 euro for deliveries of quanties.

Often it's lads inability to bargain and source product. As well most ofvtge discussion here has been small sub 1 ton bins V a fixed bin. The fixed bin wins all the time

Whatever loader or tractor you fodder with, having a spare front and back wheel sitting there pumped and ready to swop onto the machine is great.

It's always the day you're under pressure that you find a wheel flat, and nowhere open to fix it.

V true. Everyone kinda has to own one now, not many garages around here supply air let alone free air anymore.