Biggest thing that makes them viable is you use the straw you need. If you just drop a bale in and spread by hand you’ll use it all, regardless of how much they need. With that you will use half the straw. No experience with a mchale one, we have at teagle 808 that we bought new about 15 years ago and still going. Had the odd bearing and rotted panel, but that’s just the ‘farmer effect’-I.e don’t beleive in grease guns and/or washing it
Tom, I LOVE how passionate your Dad is about explaining the reasoning/functions behind why you guys are trying things out/bringing new equipment onto the farm and their purposes. He's so analytical, and it helps me learn ! It looks like it contributes nicely and saves you some time/wasted hay!
Ots so admirable that you keep your cows so well and with proper bedding and clean, it's hard work . My grandma used to say " milk cow wants a servant " , im not a farmer but I saw that most other animals don't need that much work as milk cows. Thank you for letting us be a part of it and hopefully become more grateful for the milk or meat we get from farmers .
Our little country is Leading the way so we are 🇮🇪 Carlow represented well on Toms channel too, Keenan feeder, Hispec tanker they hired , Broughan and smyth trailers during silage.
We went away from mchale because we demoed a kidd and was twice the job of the mchale before the mchale we had a teagle but it was abit soft the mchale was god but kidd better
What great support provided by your vendor as TOM shows all the different features. Appears to be a great time and body saver. The girls don’t seem to be bothered by the new kit. Thanks for sharing. 🐄🚜😷👍
The straw blowers suit the enclosed sheds like the new one, messy bedding open sheds on windy days. Watch out for stone bullets when you're in the firing line. Check out led lights fitted to the manitou on "Farming life at La Forge" Tom, if you're looking to brighten your own up for the Christmas .
If you toss your baleage (silage) into it to blow it into a mixer you get a much finer silage too. Makes it go easier on the mixer to run it in while it's mixing. You can put a bolt hole in the last bit of the chute and clamp in a wedge to split the spray into a pair of tracks to get a better spread too. Also to what Joseph Parker said above it roughs the straw up pretty good - crumpling and splitting it up - and makes it work better as bedding as well. You can dump in a foot of sawdust then throw a bale on top and push both... will make very quick work of pigfeed too. XD
Few years ago I picked up an old kidd bale chopper. Best piece of equipment I ever bought! It's very rough but it'll chop bedding hay just fine. Here in the states sawdust and straw are pricey. I still use them in certain situations, but old or poor quality hay makes great everyday bedding as long as it's chopped.
I have a mounted Teagle blower, best tool I’ve ever bought. Went for mounted as it’s easier to reverse down narrow yards. Getting in the way of the blowing could hurt if you have any stones in your straw, but the cattle don’t seem to mind. Saves a fortune in straw, little and often
We bought a second hand teagle 8080 straw chopper in 2013, still going strong, love it to peace's saves time and labour but as everyone says in the comments, dust and stones can be fatal, we've been lucky up to now, avoided aiming directly at the cattle, try to aim to the floor, recently been looking to swap for a McHale like this so looking forward to your overall review, keep it up👍
Good bit of kit Tom. A lot safer than going into the yard to bed up you’d think. However we found that when we used this the cattle were a bugger to weigh and generally handle as not going in everyday took the human element away. Cattle became wilder and jumpy in crushes in runs and that side became more dangerous and time consuming. In the end we sold it and went back to bedding up by hand everyday.
There are 3 models in the range, and there is a plate you can add to feed silage with it (have a look at the Grassmen video from 2 weeks ago where mchale show how it works)
We love our straw chopper, it saves so much time and cost of bedding 1 4ft round bale will usually do two 60ftx24ft pens depending on how dense the bale is though ours is a 3pt type one as our 80ft shed we have to reverse up a 8.5ft wide passage only time I still put two or three bales in a pen is if we are feeding straw. Admittedly it is also part or the reason we winter shear as the sheep run into it but we have also found they're more comfortable in the shed shorn anyway and it causes less problems at lambing as we can pick up on problems more easily. It also means the lambs suck on a teat rather than trying to suck a clump of wool which 70% were doing the last year we didn't shear leaving us to have to teach them.
You have a very nice operation you and ginger make a great team would love and visit you guys and your beautiful country one day once covid is over we have cattle operation and custom service in Canada. great job tom keep it up love your video
The machine looks like it will make your life a lot easier, hope you will be able to afford to keep it on the farm. Thanks for posting and best of luck at the doc for your dad.
The cows seem so happy with the nice fluffy bedding they can eat or lay on. Nowdays the weather is so cold, wet and miserable for all livestock and they appreciate being warm and dry.
Without a doubt, a straw chopper is the best bit of kit we have bought on our farm (aside from the Telehandler) in the last 30 years, it's genuinely cut my work load by a third! Sent you a picture of the style we have on Instagram!
With ours the baler picks up the odd stone and they rattle on the stanchions, and the seeds germinate on the bullock's back and some would have a green layer growing on them!!! Its a useful bit of kit, ours is a Teagale,
We got one and it’s brilliant, use it for feeding silage bales and bedding cattle up. Be interesting to see what it’s like on sawdust, we put wood chip through and seemed to be fine
What an awesome piece of kit, that will definitely help save you time and money in the long run. Also a new bit of tech which is helping push the farm along :)
It appears to make a lot of sense from an economic point of view and also very importantly from a safety point of view those are large beef animals . Also time pressures on a winter farm routine this machine has got to be helpful. Love the way the farm is developing and the way you interface and manage the business with all its various aspects. I include yourself Tom your Dad and your mum who I feel is in the background but very importantly keeping an eye on the pennies. I feel there will be further announcements in the near future tractor wise because the Hurliman can't keep carrying the main tractor burden tho it has been a fantastic servant. Keep safe one and all.
I prefer the tegal Tom blows a long distance at 1250rpm and have it between 4.5 and 5 on the speed setting for dry bales and around 3.5 and 4 of wet bales on dry bales you want to make sure your moving abit quicker in the tractor as you will get a nice even spread but don’t forget to move the spout up and down as it does help to stop it building up too much at the wall love the videos by the way and what a cracking shed all the best from your fellow farmers here in Cambridgeshire
I think in the McHale you can stop the front beater on the control box? This would be a great benefit as it stops that first bit or last bit of straw/silage falling in the fly and blocking it after the pro's been stopped.
I'm jealous of that new shed. It looks like a dream to work in. Easy feeding, easy bedding (with this machine) and seems like easy movement of cattle. Our shed is cramped in comparison
Just one thing Tom, when u ran in the line of fire of the straw chopper, I know somone who done that and a stone it I'm clean in the head and killed him, so be careful
@@DIGGER19860 I used to have a hard time understanding them, his father in particular, but I've been watching for a year now and I understand everything! English is my second language
Hi Tom sure you’ve probably seen it but Grassmen had the guy from Mchale talk about and demo this exact model about a week ago, I work for a hay n straw merchant and your right prices are rising due to shortage already !!!!!! Absolutely love your videos fella, keep them coming and all stay safe, cheers
We have bedded saw dust with a blower and it worked okay at the start but used to leave piles of it at the door what it could not get out, the more times you loaded it with the sawdust the more was stuck in it
Great vid Tom. You can also get 3 point mounted straw choppers and I think that would probably work better on your farm so it’s probably worth looking at as well.
Tom we use less straw now we have a straw chopper. It saves so much time to and lets you do other things. Look forward to your review on the McHale. Interesting video Tom
When you get new equipment you should give your dad a camera and leave him to talk about it, he really knows his stuff then you can edit and keep the stuff you deem relevant
as long as it makes everyones life easier its worth it , work smarter not harder, , even if a new ones a bit out of reach with other stuff going on , i bet theres a decent second hand one out there somewhere
We do some pens twice a day but not all. It also means we can be bedding down whilst milking as you don't need to open an close gates for the telehandler to get in each pen
