Feed Mixer Wagon Product

Overview

A feed mixer wagon (diet feeder) prepares a total mixed ration (TMR): silage, hay or straw, concentrates, by-products and minerals blended so uniformly that a cow cannot sort the tasty components from the rest. TMR feeding stabilises rumen pH and is standard on dairy farms above roughly 60 cows; the wagon is the machine that makes it practical. A 14–20 m³ twin-auger machine mixes one load for 60–120 cows in five to eight minutes and lays it along the feed fence on the way past.

The working principle is simple. Inside the Mixing Tub, two conical Auger Screws rotate at 20–40 rpm. Their flighting lifts material from the floor up the tub wall; at the top it tumbles back into the centre, establishing a continuous vertical convection loop. Serrated Auger Knife blades on the flighting edge — eight per auger, reversible — shear long forage against hydraulically inserted Counter-Knife blades in the wall, so the machine chops whole round bales to ration length as part of mixing. For rations that should keep fibre length, the counter-knives retract.

How it works

Loading is a weighing exercise. The tub sits on four Load Cells, 10-tonne shear-beam cells summed in the Load Cell Junction Box, and the Weigh Indicator stores each ration as an ingredient sequence: 3,200 kg grass silage, 1,800 kg maize silage, 250 kg rapeseed meal, and so on. As the loader drops each component in, the indicator counts down to zero and steps to the next ingredient; the Remote Display makes the figures readable from the loader cab so one person does the whole job. Practical accuracy of ±5 kg matters because mineral and additive inclusions are small and overdosing concentrates is the most expensive mistake in dairy feeding.

Drive comes from the tractor through the PTO Shaft at 540 or 1000 rpm. A Two-Speed Splitter Gearbox offers a low gear for starting under a full load of bale material and a high gear for final mixing; below each auger a Planetary Auger Gearbox makes the final reduction to about 30 rpm at torques up to 60 kNm. A cam-type Overload Clutch protects the line when a frozen silage lump stalls an auger. Power demand peaks at 110 kW while chopping dry round bales and falls to 40–50 kW once the mix is processed — mixing time beyond the necessary five to eight minutes only burns fuel and over-processes fibre.

Two details guard the herd rather than the machine. Tramp-Metal Magnets on the flighting catch baling wire and fence scrap, the cause of hardware disease in cattle, and the Wear Floor Plate plates under the augers are sacrificial, replaced when sand-laden silage has thinned them.

Discharge

At the feed fence the operator opens a Discharge Door — a guillotine in the tub wall whose opening height meters flow — and the auger scrapers push ration onto the Cross Conveyor, a reversible chain-and-slat conveyor driven by an orbital Conveyor Hydraulic Motor. Driving along at walking pace lays an even windrow on either side, placed by the Deflector Chute. All hydraulic functions — doors, counter-knives, conveyor direction — run from a single tractor spool through the Solenoid Valve Bank, selected electrically from the Cab Control Box in the cab.

Chassis and variants

The Chassis Frame carries the tub on its load cells and reacts auger torque into a tandem Tandem Axle rated 9 t per axle; gross weights run 12–18 t, with dual-line Brake System equipment for 40 km/h road transport.

The trailed PTO machine described here is the dominant format, but the same tub-and-auger core appears as self-propelled mixers with their own engine and loading arm, stationary mixers in feed kitchens, and single-auger machines down to 6 m³ for small herds. Ration uniformity is verified in practice with shaker-box sieving of samples along the windrow; a well-set twin-auger wagon holds particle-size distribution within a few percent from first drop to last.