Earlier this year we visited Nick Davis at Esgair Draen Llwyn Llandrindod Wells to see his Kongskilde VM22 in action. Nick purchased the feed mixer after seeing our Kongskilde demonstration in November. The VM 22 was purchased to replace a Kuhn that had served him well but given its age it was taking over half an hour just to get a load out on top of the mixing time, which was getting progressively longer even with new blades.
Nicks new VM22 Nick has a 5 cube extension on it pushing it up to 27 cubic metres, giving him extra capacity for mixing. It holds about 5 tonne on a maintenance high fibre dry matter mix. During the mixing operation the feeder took very little power from the T7.200 Nick was using to mix the load. The day before we visited Nick had done some routine maintenance on the feeder and he commented on how all the grease nipples on the drive line to the gear box are lined up which does make more sense for maintenance.
Nick mixed 400 kg of straw and 2.8 Tons of grass silage with some additional magnesium flakes to get those essential nutrients in. This is a transition feed for the last 3 weeks of calving before they go out to grass. The mix was really good consistency dry cow mix but Nick told us that even bales of hay in other mixes were no problem in this mixer and didn’t take long to prepare. The load we watched him mix took less than 15 minutes to mix and was really well mixed – great consistency with all the nutrients evenly distributed.
After feeding some of herd in his old shed we headed up to the new shed where there is housing for 624 cows. The total feeding time for both sheds was about 15 mins.
We asked Nick to summarise the main benefits of this Kongskilde. He told us:
“It does a really good mix”
“The ability to feed both sides and also reach to high up awkward places”
“It tows well, it’s great on turning” (Ash who works with Nick confirmed it’s good manoeuvrability)
“The stability is excellent compared to our previous machine”
“The cross conveyor gives a lot of flexibility”
It was good to hear about the transition the farm made back in 2014 when they stopped traditional sheep and beef suckler cows and made the transition to dairy with their first milking in 2015. This is their eigth calving season and they have a milk collection every 3 days supplying Yewtree. Mostly the milk goes for milk powder for baby food and yoghurt. At peak times they are milking 530 cattle and they are 7,000 litres up on the same date last year. By April the yield will be the same as 2019 when they were calving 3 weeks earlier – this year half of the herd had calved in 7 days!
Working at this scale of operation Nick explained “We gain 2 hours a day with this new mixer – before it was taking 5/6 hour day to complete feeding that’s a massive difference to labour costs and availability on the farm.” In addition to this the reduction in tractor running time is very important when you consider a tractor uses up to 20 litres per hour on todays costs that’s equivalent to £20 ph saving.
If you’d like to know more about what Kongskilde diet feeders could do for you farm give Martyn a call on 01938 552147
Kongskilde Feed Mixer saving time and money
A really good mix
Cattle enjoying their feed
Kongskilde control
