FACILITIES & EQUIPMENT

Ensuring that plants receive adequate nutrition is a critical component of a profitable yield, no matter which forage crop you produce.

Forage equipment is traditionally used to harvest and package crops such as grass, alfalfa, triticale, wheat, barley, oats, corn and sorghum. When harvesting grass, alfalfa or triticale, the product is most often cut with a swather or mower.

For more than a decade, Ray Bohacz has been tailoring his mechanical experience as an automobile engineer to help farmers with their own equipment. He operates a podcast and website dedicated to explaining how machinery works and how to diagnose it. Progressive Dairy Editor Walt Cooley recently interviewed him for Progressive Dairy’spodcast (Ray Bohacz: Machinery maintenance tips form the 'Hot Rod Farmer') to learn more about his background.

The purchase or replacement of a piece of machinery for your farm business is a major decision point and goes beyond the availability of cash to pay for it. It goes without saying that new machinery and equipment, particularly self-propelled machinery with ever-evolving technological features and options, is very expensive.

There’s an old adage in the feed business. It goes: “There are four rations: the ration on paper, the ration that gets mixed, the ration that gets delivered and the ration that gets consumed.”

Automated technologies – from calf feeding and feedbunk management to milking procedures and herd management – can create efficiency and consistency on your farm.