October 23, 2008: Shucklage

Not everyone works in a cubicle! Part of my yearly work load is to put up feed for the year for our cows. This is what is called shucklage. This stuff used to be the waste product of seed corn production until some realized it makes a high quality cheap feed. We were early converts.



The trucks are first filled with picked ear corn and taken to the Pioneer plant where the majority of the seed corn kernels are "shucked" by a special machine. The leftover product of shucks and corn has an added innoculant {fermentation product} and is sold as shucklage for a cheap feed source. It runs about $14 a ton. We feed around a ton a day, they usually bring us around 500 ton. 30 or more trucks will bring this "shucklage" to our farm. Once it gets here it has to be pushed into a pile like a huge loaf of bread and it is run over and compressed. Finally thousands of gallons of water are added to the top to assure fermentation. My husband is driving the payloader I run the bobcat!

How do you unload the truck? Is there something inside pushing it out?

They have like a conveyor belt system and the truck drivers do the unloading. Very kewl and noisy!

To compare the cost of hay which has less protein than shucklage; a large round bale of hay is $60-$80 we would need to feed one bale a day and supplement corn @ $4 a bushel @ 2 per day and we only have 30 cows!

You look like you're well-bundled on a clear day in October. How far north are you?

And the cows eat that stuff. Amazing.

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Originally Posted by newtimer You look like you're well-bundled on a clear day in October. How far north are you?

I think that's called a walking-floor trailer.

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Originally Posted by Nirvana It was about 30 some degrees for awhile in the morning and the wind was vicious yesterday! I am in northern Indiana.

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Originally Posted by Nirvana It was about 30 some degrees for awhile in the morning and the wind was vicious yesterday! I am in northern Indiana.

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Originally Posted by Nirvana They have like a conveyor belt system and the truck drivers do the unloading. Very kewl and noisy!

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Originally Posted by Pico and ME Hey Nirvana, I'm from northwest Indiana and now live in north central Indiana. We are nearly neighbors.

They're also known as live-bottom trailers. We used those in Wyoming at the wood pellet manufacturing plant to offload unprocessed sawdust from the sawmills. They're kinda slow, but much easier than using a shovel as you might imagine.
http://www.troutriverindustries.ca/p...ction=Capacity

Cattle love anything to do with corn. I know my dad always gives his corn shucks to the his cows, so it doesn't surprise me that they'd market the commercial quantities as feed.

I looked at the last trailer and they are "walking trailers"! They unload in 15 min or less.

In Central California, across the road from where I work there is a David and Son's Sunflower Seed Packaging plant. The trucks of bulk seeds come in, get unhooked from the tractors, hoisted up on one end with a giant crane and the seeds come sliding out! Kind of weird looking, but much simpler than a truck with a built in conveyor belt. Maybe because the sunflower seeds are very light weight, a whole truck is easy to lift?

Well I really looked in the last truck, its not exactly a conveyor belt. It has four separate pieces of flooring that have planks like giant piano keys they all move forward then about every other one moves back and they move forward then the others move back.

I have the tickets from the drivers and each truck here is carrying about 18,750 kgs, don't know how that compares to the weight of seeds.

Didn't that stuff just used to be called sileage? Thought it had been around for quite some time.

Silage is entire corn plants, ears and all chopped straight out of the field.

I've learned something new today! Go, me!

They had a weird harvester in the corn field across from the nuthouse this year. It sucked the whole corn plant into the front end, then stripped and shucked the kernals off the ears and spewed out the chopped up leftovers back onto the field. When the hopper filled up, they drove the machine over to an open top truck and the kernals got spewed into it.

There is probably a far more technical way to describe this, but my buzz-words are pretty much all psych related.

One thing that was kind of neat is that the harvester was fitted with superbright lights so that they could keep working after sundown.

Every year when they harvest the corn I can't help but thinking of Mrs. Frisby.

During the night harvesting I always think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and usually tell at least one cow orker that they're out in the field harvesting the pods again.

Yeah, they use walking floor trucks here in CA as moving vans. They can unload the truck in about five minutes without getting out of the cab... Or even slowing down for that matter.


I kid.. I really did learn something on this thread.. I love that since I practically know everything - it's always nice to find some new tidbit.

Thanks, Nirvana.

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Originally Posted by wolf Every year when they harvest the corn I can't help but thinking of Mrs. Frisby.

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Originally Posted by Nirvana We feed around a ton a day...30 cows

per day.

Bah, in my day we had to unload the shucklage with pitch-forks. The whole village would turn out for the deschucklaging, like we used to say, and it was a long hard day, but it was worth it for the deshucklage ball that night.

And as for the schucking itself, well we had to do that by hand, and a terrible job it was. One time even old Father Murphy lost his temper with doing it and had a holy shucking fit.

I remember that!