Winter feed costs make up the bulk of animal input costs on the prairie, so blending forage of different qualities into a ration can help stretch feed stocks and provide the right blends at the right time.
The marketing staff at Highline Manufacturing of Vonda, Saskatchewan, believes their CFR1251 Bale Pro processor can help producers with larger herds blend those rations quickly and efficiently. To back up that claim, the company brought a CFR1251 to the Ag in Motion show site in July and demonstrated its abilities for Grainews, then again during the show for all the visitors.
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“It’s considerably faster to get out a ration to a beef animal,” says Jamie Charlton, territory sales manager for Highline, of the CFR1251. “You can feed the same amount of animals in a fraction of the time with one of these. You have the ability to blend two forage products in the tub at once along with a grain-type product or pellet to put through the machine and make a full mixed ration.”
The CFR1251 can process three bales in the large tub and feed out that material along with up to 30 bushels of grain. The aggressiveness of the chopping can be adjusted with up to five different settings for the front and rear bale compartments.
“You have the ability to put hay in the front and two straw in the back to blend straw with a hay bale to stretch feed a little bit longer,” Charlton adds. “That’s the concept behind it. We have a chopper built into it as well, so it has the ability to bunk feed or you can blow it out onto the ground.”
A camera kit is available to help monitor what’s going on inside the processing tub and to see behind the machine. That makes loading bales a little easier, because the view from the tractor cab is partly obscured.
“It helps you back up and get loaded properly,” he says. “It has a unique loading sequence, the same as our other CFR line. It loads the bale up. It’ll walk the bale all the way to the front. The second (bale) just loads like our standard CFR line. The forks come up and it deposits into the back tub. Once the second bale is done processing, you can load the third bale and blend the two into one.”
The CFR1251 can handle any size round bale and will take 150 horsepower or more up front to run it. A lighting kit and electric over hydraulic valves are available as an option. That allows a tractor with only two rear remotes to run the processor.
“We’ve had it out for a few years now,’ Charlton said. “But we’re just getting back into it now. There seems to be a demand.”
The machine demonstrated for Grainews had a retail price of $67,600 as equipped. For more information go online and visit highlinemfg.com.
