Portable chipper-shredder

[plowjockey]

Anyone use a chipper-shredder for tree limbs, etc.

I was wondering how one may work to chop small amounts of hay and straw. I'd like to insulate some barn walls with chopped straw.

Marty

[Windy in Kansas]

I have put wheat straw through a chipper/shredder to use the material in composting.

What I found was that the straw shredded and wound up in flat pieces a couple of inches long. I wouldn't call it chopped at all.

If you want chopped material and you have a good sized tractor available, you might be able to find a "Fox" or other brand of silage cutter that has a bale table attachment and run bales through via it. If you had a cutter with windrow pickup attachment you might be able to tear bales apart and feed it into the chopper that way.

Now back to chipper/shredders. I find that paper run through one fluffs up VERY much like cellulose insulation. One would need to treat the material for vermin and with fire resisting chemical. Mother Earth News told what treatment to use decades ago. Seems it was boric acid or borax but I wouldn't use either until I learned which.

Best wishes for finding a material to use which suits.

[CJ]

We have a PTO one for our tractor. It's one of the best things we ever bought! We're clearing out some of the woods on our property, and it's all getting chipped into mulch for our garden beds.