Anyone chip their own hogfuel/mulch?

[Dubi]

I'm looking at the viability of making our own mulch/hogfuel vs. buying it. We have many acres of timber with downed trees and logging refuse, mostly pine, so the supply is there. Is only the bark used? We're wondering how long it takes to do the labor? What kind of chipper is needed for garden/landscaping mulch, and what kind for hogfuel (for horse footing)? Can the same machine do both? Thanks for any info...

[WisJim]

We have rented a chipper to grind up branches and trimmings for mulch. Not sure how that differs from "hogfuel". The chipper cost about $120 to rent for an 8 hour day, and my 2 sons (ages 26 and 30 and in good shape) kept me busy with the pickup truck and tractor and trailer, moving and unloading loads of mulch. A 3rd son helped for a couple of hours after work, and it would have been useful to have had 3 or 4 people besides myself all day. We were glad that we had already cut and piled a lot of limbs, brush, etc., but still didn't get it all done. I would guess that we ended up with 12 pickup loads or more, and I felt that having the mulch was great. The chipper was a little like this one on eBay, but with a smaller gasoline engine:
http://cgi.ebay.com/brush-bandit-tre...QQcmdZViewItem

We used just a bit more than 6 gallons of gas during the day. It ran almost all the time, maybe was off for 20 minutes total for lunch.

[Dubi]

WisJim, sounds like you had a productive day! Thankfully, we too have several people to help with labor. I'm thinking of spending several weekends trucking brush to one place (at a good mulch pile location) and then doing the machine work on another weekend.

Hogfuel/hogsfuel is just bigger chunks of bark and wood. I'm not sure how it ever got that name. It's used mostly for livestock footing, riding arenas, roads, etc. as far as I know. We've used sand and shavings in the past but have so much brush/downed trees available it makes sense to use it.

Thanks for your encouraging reply--it sounds doable and cost-effective.

[tinknal]

I worked in a plant that produced the stuff as a byproduct. The machine that "eats" the wood is called a "Hog", hence hog fuel.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

I think you would have a hard time justifing "making" your own mulch on a cost basis, unless you were generating other signifiacnt value, ie cleaning up your property. The stuff you buy is made with huge equipment running all day everyday being fed by cheap labor. By the time you bought/rented equipment and supplied the labor for handling the materials, I think you may be better off buying it. I have found this to be true of many things like hay, grain, ect... either you have a lot of capital tied up in equipment that you would rather have in something else, or you do it with less equipment in a less efficient manner. So, unless you find the process very satisfying or gain significant additional value, I would not recommend it. However, I don't know what you pay for mulch !