Hi guys, this is my first post on the forum after "lurking" for a little while. I'm from Georgia, west central to be exact, got my grandfather's 2MH mounted on a 450 Farmall and a 237 JD mounted on 4010 diesel tricycle with a sheller attachment. I've got a 440 acre farm down here, plant about 140 acres of corn each year, chop about 50 for silage and pick/shell the rest, and the balance of the land is in pasture/hay. I really enjoy the old pickers and old iron in general, and look forward to chatting with you fellows.
I will try to post pics of the pickers in action soon.
I shell about 30 acres and pick the rest on the ear to grind for feed. I've got an Angus seedstock operation I'd rather mix my own feed for (better quality, I watch what goes in it, cheaper too) with an ancient truck mounted mixer my grandfather also bought new back in the late 40's (the mixer/crusher is now mounted on a 10 year old IH 4700 truck and run off a GM 6 cylinder diesel power unit), and I do some custom feed mixing for friends and business associates in a share/share arrangement. I can get brewers' grains from a local Budweiser plant and make a "hot mix" for cattle, or crush oats and shoot molasses into it for sweet feed for horses, and make a little money on the side, but most importantly, have a lot of fun doing it (though some folks would probably call my idea of fun, old tractors and farming, crazy).
We still pick and grind all our feed also, usually about 60 acres, milk about 60 cows, grind all the feed for calves all the way up to the milking cows. We dont really have enough cows to go TMR, and this way is easier, and cheaper.
There's a lot of feed in a corn crop, it always amazes me how many people don't realize that. I've got 130 brood cows, and with 50 acres of good silage corn, and the 40 acres or so of ear corn I keep for myself, along with some oats I grow a friend of mine combines for me (he does any combining I need and handles some of the genetics for my cow herd, and I grind and mix some feed for him, works well IMO), and some ryegrass/wheat winter grazing, I'm feeding a lot less hay (probably between 50-60 percent less), keeping cows in better body condition, and seeing better weight gain/maintenance with healthier calves than with bought feed or on a complete grass diet. I don't feed daily, maybe a bucket of silage per ten cows twice weakly alternated with crushed feed/supplement. It really works well for me, and keeps the feed costs down thru the winter while keeping the cows bodies in really good shape coming into spring or after calving season.
