# Hay Chopper



## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

Give me some good ideas for what would work best or make cheaply a hay chopper. The idea is to use alfalfa hay and some of it to chop up coursely to make cubes or smaller portioned feed. Also, if finer chopped or ground into meal? 
I guess a branch or leaf shredder is a good starting point to consider, but any other suggestions would be welcome  .


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## fordson major (Jul 12, 2003)

there is a farm impliment called a forage harvester. older ones had a heavy fly wheel that the blades attach too. picks hay outa the field and blows it into a wagonor truck . you can also get choppers that process bales and make chopped feed . if we get time will post some pix of varisous choppers


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## Ross (May 9, 2002)

We used to feed square bales into a grinder mixer hammer mill and it would grind it to dust. You could add whatever you wanted to at that point, corn oats mineral etc. Another way to grind bales is with a bale chopper. There are small ones for square bales (valmetal) which are commonly used to chop straw bales for bedding, or large ones for round bales (or lots of squares,) that chop and either blow it out or drop it into a pile. There are also TMR mixers (total mixed ration) that often can process baled hay too. a leaf shredder would certainly chop hay fed slowly through it, or you could rent a bigger branch chipper and make short work of a large pile of hay. Remember chopped feeds lose feed value faster than feeds stored in their whole state.


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## Blu3duk (Jun 2, 2002)

around these parts i still see from time to time an old stationary chopper around, sitting there waiting fer someone to make it useful agin.... 

one problem that does arise from feeding ALL chopped hay is in cattle they need long stems to help the stomahce digest properly, can get compacted very easy and i know a fella who lost a few head, feeding just chopped hay.... the cows loved it and they wasted very little if any.... so much for being frugal.

Sheep get dust into the nostrils and have respitory problems occur from feedinf all chopped alfalfa..... another fella i know found out the hard way on that too.... not sure if that one has a correction or not.

the choppers look similar to the chippers of today only they have a wide opening and a chain driven infeed about the size of a bale of hay... maybe a little bigger, most are on iron wheels for towing around the farm, but are still considered stationary as they are run in one place. Dont happen to have a picture handy for a visual.... couldnt readily find one with a qwik search either but will keep looking.

William


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