Help: Need suggestion for cleaning out a hog confinement feeder
 

We have been given about 3 tons of the fines that are left over from an organic hog confinement facility. They are wanting us to get it moved, but there are just the 2 of us, a shovel, and several feed bags. This must be transported about 125 miles after we get it. Transporting is NOT the problem, but they are wanting it moved out of the bins quickly. Anyone have any suggestions for getting it moved from the bins without so much hard labor at it?

Thanks in advance!

Rent a skid steer and a dump truck. I'm not being funny or sarcastic, but WHY would you even consider doing such a thing? You've taken on an extremely labor intensive job with very little reward if you intend to use the shovel and bag method.

Reason why
 

The reason why Bret is because it is free animal feed that will last us a very long time with all of our chickens, geese, quail, and 3 hogs and because at the time, we are low on money. We did have farm help until recently and since they have left us, we have only ourselves to do this. This is about 150 bags of feed. Labor intense yes, which is why I'm trying to find an easier solution. Renting heavy equipment is not a possibility. If I were able to do that, I could just as easily forget this and buy the feed.

Borrow a gravity wagon from someone and auger the feed into it.If the feed is not in an auger bin you can borrow a small 12 or 16 foot 4inch auger and use that.If you can not get at the feed with an auger you will just have to do it by hand.

Hey folks!
 

Yep, this is the type of bin with the auger on it and the trap door at the bottom. Unfortunately, we don't have anything but a pickup to haul it in and the sacks. We have done this before. The problems involved (and you're right, its not that much), BUT, wind is a BIG factor up here, and by the time we drove 125 miles with the wind blowing, even with a tarp over it, (and our tailgate doesn't fit right), we probably would end up with less than half of it that way, so the bags are our best shot. The biggest problem though, is getting it done in say maybe just a few short hours. You see, I work a full time job, my husband is a full time pastor and has that to contend with as well as our farm job.

I thought about a shop vac, but I think I asked about that once before and someone thought it might clog one of those up. I did find a lawn vac, but it is so expensive that by the time we buy that, we haven't really saved anything.

This 3 tons of feed is really a big boost to our feed capability and it can be mixed with the all stock feed as well in times of shortage IF we have to although we rarely do that. This man typically gives us feed like this several times a year, but as I said, in the past we have had help getting it and had more time to get it. My husband is 72, and although strong, is getting a little less capable of doing quite so much, so it gets to be a tough job.

I am talking to him about hiring someone from a homeless shelter for a temporary job for this, so we may have the problem solved, but I figured if we could find a good solution that we could use for the future, it would surely be a help even if we do have a long time to get it the next time! Plus, some of the others out there, might be able to find a friendly farmer who needs their hog feeders cleaned out, and hey, they could use this tip as well? Maybe theres an invention in the future? The hog feeder vacuum?????

Once we get this feed, we store it on old nonworking freezers tucked away in each barn or outbuilding where we use it, and boy it really makes it nice! Saves a LOT on feed bills! Especially when you have nearly 200 chickens to feed! They love it!

Contact your local probation officer and see if there are guys who need to do some community service. Call the local boy scout leader and see if there are some boys wanting to earn badges that would be willing to help out. There should be someone available that could help out.

Shop vacs are built differently than regular vacs. If you have a fairly powerful one, and the run is not too long, it could be an option. The impeller is totally separate from the motor, and a screen would keep out any big particles. I envision the top of the vac replacing the lid of a trash can, a feed bag in the trash can (sitting in the bed of the pickup), pulled out and tied and replaced after each load, and hose or PVC pipe no longer than about 25'.

However, for three tons, I'd just use a wheelbarrow with a hole drilled in the front for a rope, so one person could push it and one pull (or even use a winch), and a sturdy long plank or two with a brace underneath, to act as a ramp into the back of the truck. Once the load was in the truck it would be dumped into a bag. That eliminates most of the heavy lifting and is only about 120 loads of 50 lbs. The truck is probably limited to 1.5 tons load anyway, so there is a break period built in. You do need a few bags.

Chickens and time.

Grannygardner
 

Great ideas! Never even gave those 2 places a thought. My husband is a minister and has, many years ago, been asked to have men do yard work at the churches for community service, so this would be a great thing! The Boy Scouts as well! He's going to start calling on Monday and see what we can do. We just have a few days to get this, and that would really work well!

Thanks again!

Highlands, cute, very cute! LOL:nana:

Shop vacs should have a filter between the canister and the motor. Just get a new filter for it, wash out the tank (canister), put the bag in the canister, put the top on, and it should work fine.

Do you really want to be responsible for transporting individuals on a 250 mile round trip, being responsible for their safety the entire time, while towing 3 tons of grain? Check your insurance policies closely. Right or wrong, you have an accident, and a few folks get injured, or worse, and you're putting your entire homestead on the line, regardless of an insurance policy or not.

I'd be terrified of such a scenario.

Shovel, sacks, and a good back... sounds like a family operation.

I've had the worst allergy attack ever while dealing with grain from the bottom of a silo. It had just been sitting there, maybe got a little damp, developed a little fungal infection. Nasty aspergillus black mould. The dust had me blow up with hives, including swelling shut my eyes and my breathing passages. If I hadn't had some anti-allergy pills - mix of pseudo-ephedrine and antihistamine - I'd have given up breathing permanently. I can no longer buy those little lifesavers, thanks to meth makers and even worse, politicians.

The price of that dusty rubbish you're looking at could be a whole lot higher, for anyone (any particular susceptible individual - pick one - you wouldn't know 'til it happened) than you think.

Does the auger work on the bin? If so just go inside the buliding and auger the feed into your bags, then carry the bags out of the building.

I wonder if you couldn't rent/borrow a small electric auger on wheels. Shovel from the feeder to the hopper and auger it into bags in the truck so there wouldn't be any lifting once you shovel it into the hopper.

I apologize, my mistake. Like Wind in her hair I thought you were hauling hog manure from a feeding facility!!!

Doesn't the organic hog farm owner have a skidsteer you could borrow to lift those bags up to the bed of the truck? That seems to me to be the biggest limitation. Filling the bags from the trap door or auger, drag over, LIFTING, drag across truck bed & stack. If you have to, fill the bags to 50 or 60# instead of full to 100#, will take more bags, but if you have enough bags, the same amount of trips. And a LOT easier on the back.

well
 

Again folks, the bags we have are 40 pound bags, not 50 or more, so we can lift them, this is not the problem at all. The problem is my husband is 72 years old, and his back is wearing out. That MANY bags is the problem for a 72 year old back. We have done this many times, so IF we had the time and it were closer and we could do it in small amounts, say 10 bags at a time and then come home and let him rest, it would be different. This is 125 miles away and we are looking at having to do it all in 1 day, possibly 1 trip. Family operation???? There are just the 2 of us. A 72 year old man and a 51 year old woman. That's the family! LOL That's why we need help.

As far as allergies to this stuff, no we don't worry about that, cause we don't have it, and yes the feed is WELL worth going after, when you think about 150 of these 40 pound bags full of chicken feed for just loading and bringing it home rather than buying 150 of these 40 pound bags, loading it at the store and bringing it home.

As far as the auger, it doesn't work to auger it into these sacks, and we can't just auger it into the back of the truck. Again, the tailgate on the pickup is no good, doesn't stay in place, so we'd basically just be streaming it down the road 125 miles home or blowing it off the top down the road home, and there would be no use in doing that. We can park the truck right next to the bin, we fill 5 gallon buckets, hand them into the pickup, dump them into the sacks, or fill the sacks and hand the full sacks into the pickup and set them in place, tarp it over and drive home and unload it. BUT again, the problem is having some help to get it done this quickly at our ages.

I still think that Granny's idea IS the best. However, my husband is also headed to the homeless shelter on Monday and is going to see if he can find someone that is willing to come and live here on the farm and then we can get some help that way. We have also done that many times, and although it never works for long, sometimes it works for at least a little while, and a little while is better than no while.

Well, this might cost more than you want to spend if you don't already have most of this stuff, but...

A shop vac, a bunch of round 33 gallon garbage cans, and one of these Cyclone Lids, and you could suck the stuff right into cans in the bed of the truck.

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/200...clone-Lid.aspx

I store feed in 33 gallon cans and each holds about 200lbs, so you would need 10 cans per ton.

Whatever you do, good luck!

NW Rancher
 

Excellent idea here too! My husband looked at this and is going to check with the guy and find out how close the electricity is and what kind of cords we would need and see where our shop vac is and round up our garbage cans. We have lots of these already and this would probably work pretty well. We also have some ramps that we could put in the back of the pickup and a couple of 4 wheel dollies to roll the full cans out of the pickup with, so we may have that solved with this idea! Thank you very much!

Another option would be to get a large sheet of heavy plastic or tarp to line the bed of the truck. Fill the bed with feed to the top and then secure the plastic over the feed.

Fishead
 

With the tailgate of the pickup not staying in place, I don't think that will work, but thanks.

Dunroven- Even tho' you said the tailgate doesn't stay in place- how about just making a tailgate of sorts? Just a couple of 2 x 8's or 2 x 10's stacked on top of each other. Then use the other suggestion of a tarp or plastic down in the bed, fill the truck, cover with excess tarp, secure and drive away. Or, if the original tailgate doesn't stay latched, I'm assuming this is the problem, just make a bar to go from side to side of the p/u bed and down into the stake pockets- that would keep the fenders from spreading under load. Or you could even use a decent chain. I, myself, have used all of these methods before. Loading it into the p/u bed in "bulk" will allow you to haul more #'s @ a time than bags or cans. Keep this in mind when loading, so you don't overload the trucks' suspension- you don't want anything to break on your way home. I would try to keep as much of the weight forward of the axle as I could.

What kind of pickup do you have? You're talking about transporting 6,000 pounds of feed for 125 miles in the bed? Holy smokes!


Whistler

Whistler is exactly right! DON'T do this in one trip unless you have the proper truck for it. The cargo weight of a pickup is NOT all that you can fit in the bed. Read the owners manual or look for the load rating on a panel in the driver's door, then look at the load rating of your tires. If you do this in one trip, at least use a trailer for 1/2 the load. Otherwise, this could end up being a VERY expensive amount of free feed.

There is a story around here of a fellow with an expensive pickup with dually wheels that went to the rock crusher and got HALF a bed full of crushed rock, and had his wheels just splay out from under him. The duallys didn't increase the load rating of the FRAME.

We just got done setting 20,000 asparagus crowns - we hired young adults from the adult education center here in town and they were happy to help! We hired some of the Mexican fellas that work the tobacco when it's in and they were happy to get the work - one even took 3 roosters in lieu of pay! What a deal! Do you have something like that nearby??

Good luck and wear a breathing mask!