‘Our Wyoming Life’ takes a Hustler bale processor for a test drive

Early November, Lance Paskewitz, Hustler’s Business Development Manager for North America traveled all the way to Gillette, Wyoming in our Hustler RV/camper for a special delivery. A trailed Chainless TX205 bale feeder/processor joined Mike and Erin’s ranch, the creators of the YouTube Channel ‘Our Wyoming Life‘. 

The ‘Our Wyoming Life‘ ranch is located near Gillette, in the northeast corner of Wyoming, home to 175 beef cattle over 5,000 of land. 

The story behind the scene

Like many other states in the United States, Wyoming was hit by a severe drought this summer. All the farmers suffered a lot and ‘Our Wyoming Life‘ ranch was not spared. This year Mike and Erin will have to buy a lot of bales to feed their animals this winter.

As we have been following this interesting YouTube channel for quite some time, we reached out to Mike to suggest a partnership. one of our brand new machines to try it out, to see how it could help him this winter. Of course, Mike will be updating regularly the machine throughout the winter to give his opinion on the machine and try out new techniques to manage his feeding program. That’s how this piece of machinery ended up on the ranch!

After that the Chainless TX205 bale processor has been carefully inspected by a cute ginger kitty (who literally stole the show, let’s be honest!), Lance and Mike took her for a first ride. The occasion for Lance to tell us a little bit of his background. Most of Lance’s career has been spent in beef nutrition, working alongside ranchers across the US to improve their nutrition and digestion program.  “We’re always talking to ranchers about how we can get the very maximum benefit out of our feed. If we can feed the good bugs in the rumen, we’re going to get a lot better utilization and breakdown of the feed, and these cows will absorb a lot more of that nutrition from the hay,” Lance explained.

“What always bothered me is I’d go out to ranches and they would be feeding either by unrolling – just a full width of the bale – or running it through a flail-type processor. And I was thinking that after going through so much work to put up good quality hay, we’re really destroying it, we’re losing a lot of our nutrition. And that’s when I discovered Huster and how it leaves at long stem. Anytime you can feed long-stem hay, you’re producing saliva, and that hay is spending a little bit more tie in the rumen, and all of that just allows those cows to actually absorb more nutrition from that feed before it shoots out the back end,” Lance detailed.

“We’ve been taught for years that we should always chop the hay because the cows will get more out of it. Well, that is applicable and true in a feedlot situation. In a feedlot, that’s what they do. They chop it up and they’re really just absolutely jamming as much feed as they can through that animal to try to fatten it up. And yes, they get a lot of high gains. But in the cow-calf business, we’re just trying to maintain body condition so that they’re prepared for calving, etc. So you really don’t want to chop your hay, you want that chewing and that saliva production. All of that is good for the environment of the rumen, but furthermore, it’s like an internal heater,” Lance concluded.

Thanks to Mike and his family for their warm welcome!

3 benefits to adopting ‘The Hustler Way’

Hustler Equipment’s Chainless bale feeders/processors are specially designed for cow-calf operations. Th Chainless bale processing systems saves your time, bales, fuel, pasture and maintenance. 

1. More Nutritional Intake For Your Cattle

With a Chainless bale feeder/processor, hay remains intact and is not destroyed. The bale feeder simply teases the bale apart with its unique low speed 3:1 ratio rotors into a tidy windrow without chopping or grinding the bale.

This provides some key benefits that ranchers really appreciate:

• The leaves and/or grain, where a large proportion of the nutrition is found, are not smashed to powder and blown away as dust. The Hustler bale processor preserves the leaf and grain so your cattle can eat it.
• Any mold in a bale is separated from the hay without mixing it in, allowing cattle to eat fresh, clean hay.
• Ranchers are reporting up to 80% reductions in mineral supplement consumption, and up to 20% reductions in hay consumption for the same live weight gains, with the same bales!

2. Increased Versatility with Reduced Plugging

Whatever bale you have available you can rest assured that Hustler’s Chainless bale processing system will feed it out.

Leading ranchers are particularly impressed with the fact that Hustler bale processors process:

• all round bales, including 4 and 5 ft wide, up to 6 ft diameter
• all square bales even sizes up to 8 ft long.
• all wrapped high moisture balage (baled silage) bales – without ever plugging!
• all Hay & Straw bales of any forage type – proven with more than 110 different forage types.
• all frozen bales that have been stored outside over winter.

3. Simplicity & Reduced Downtime

Leading ranchers demand reliability, a key reason they love the simplicity of the Hustler bale processor.

A feeding system that is engineered and proven in the coldest of winter climates saving you downtime because of:

• No wearing parts to maintain, replace, or vibrate loose and hurt your cattle.
• Simple hydraulically driven design, with no PTO shaft and very few moving parts to keep adjusted, greased and maintained.
• Low speed rotors that allow the tractor to be operated at not much more than an idle, teasing bales apart quickly instead of chopping.
• Virtually no dust to clog air filters on your tractor, stick to your grease points or get in the eyes of your cattle.
• Ultra low power requirement allows the bale processing system to be powered with small tractors and even your pickup should it have a hydraulic supply, saving you gallons of fuel each day.
• Ranchers are reporting fuel savings of over 60% compared to their previous PTO powered hay processor.