Designing the ideal feed center for your operation

Feed makes up more than half of the costs on a dairy farm. In recent years, more attention has been given to the cost of feed shrink. More indoor feeding centers are being constructed in the Upper Midwest. As a result, producers are seeing anywhere from 4% to 12% shrink reduction by protecting ingredients from harsh weather elements.

Traffic flow

When designing feed centers, traffic flow is a major item to focus on due to payloaders, tractors, delivery trucks, and other vehicles around the feeding area. To limit congestion, space is needed for vehicles to travel, turn around and deliver. Some producers like to have semi-trucks enter and exit on the same end. Others like to have vehicles pull through without backing into the commodity bays.

Ingredient bays

Ingredient bays need to be large enough to hold several deliveries of commodities to avoid overloading the bays into the aisle. Many producers will add forages into bays and fill them daily. It is also important to set up grain systems near the bays to grind corn or soybeans directly into them.

Some indoor facilities are fully enclosed with four walls and others have one side open. Fully enclosed facilities need to have plenty of lighting so operators of payloaders and semi-trucks can safely navigate the area. As ingredients are moved around, dust can create a potential safety hazard. Proper ventilation systems will help keep dust down for increased visibility.

Mixing centers

An area for mixing needs to be at one end of the feed center or on the side of the feed center. Most often, mixers are placed at one end of the feed center. Producers will keep premix batches and forages closer to the end of the feed center to be able to keep mixing primarily at one end of the building. This will allow the commodity ingredients to be at the other end of the feed center and keep the trucks at that same end for ease of traffic flow.

To design your feed mixing area, consider two different options. Having batch boxes will allow payloader operators to add ingredients to the box as the feeder is out delivering feed. This allows employees to efficiently load feed. The feeder will then come back and dump the batch box contents into the mixer to mix and deliver.

Another option is to have the mixer at the end of the feed center and load ingredients directly into it. Usually, the mixer is lower than the level of the payloader to help offload ingredients accurately. Some farms will automate the commodity ingredients from overhead bins to have fewer hours on a payloader. Those ingredients will go directly into the batch box and mix with forages added by a payloader.

With expensive feed ingredients, feed center design is a hot topic on farm. Limiting ingredient exposure to harsh weather elements will help reduce shrink and reduce the cost of your feed program.