How big a tractor

How much horse power is needed to run a feed grinder? Was thinking about bidding on an Owe-a-ton-a green grinder. A model 83. Also, pros and cons of them.

In my early days of farming I had a Gehl 65 feed mill, a D17 and a WD. D17 handled it fine, but with the WD it was a bit of a struggle. Some years later I got the 3020 as a second field tractor (behind the 4020), and I did all the grinding with the 3020 for the next 25 years.

We ground a lot of ear corn with a 35hp ihc 300 and a Gehl 50 and 55 grinder. A few more ponies woulda been nice. But it worked.

Newer and bigger or fancier grinders would need more.

My uncle got a grinder that was run with a lot of hydraulics on the various things to drive, that one needed better than 50hp.

I'm not sure where your machine falls for size and needs.

Paul

I've got a 33HP challenger MT265. Rated 25 HP at the PTO.

We ground a lot of feed with a DC case rated at 37hp back on the farm. But they put out more like 50 on the dyno. You will be ok with what you have, it will just be slow. Start feeding slowly at first til you find how much your tractor can take so you don't slug it. It will also matter how small the screen is, smaller takes more power.

We run a NH 350 grinder with an MD have used the H also. The M handles it nicer with the weight. Sounds silly about the weight till you have pull one on an incline with ice in the winter.

Wow,guys are running these things with awful small tractors. Are we talking grinder/mixer here? My three 55 +/- horse tractors will run mine,but I really prefer at least 90,and even then I can make one smoke if I'm pushing ear corn in as fast as it'll take it.

With only 25 pto hp You will be way short on power. Grinders are hard to feed slowly so they can run on lower hp tractors. Your mix mill has the extra drag of the mixer plus all the extra feed augers and conveyors.

Dad ground all our ground earcorn for cattle feed with a Knoedler burr mill, just had the grinder and a verticle auger and short horizontal auger to run. After bugging him for months one Saturday we hooked my '39 Farmall H with 3-7/16" O/S pistons up to it to grind. Dad insisted it wouldn't pull it, and we always used the '51 M. We shoveled into a 16 ft aluminum Harvest Handler elevator that ran the earcorn up and into the hopper. I tossed the first shovel full into the elevator, watched it go up and fall into the grinder, governor on the H quickly went wide open, it pulled down a little, then a little more, finally got below 1000 rpm, then slowed down a lot more, and in about 6-8 seconds pulled down and died! All with one shovel of corn. Dad didn't say a word. Unhooked the tractor from the grinder, started it, pulled it out of the crib, got the M and hooked it to the grinder. Still coughing and sputtering he eased the clutch out of the grinder with the M at idle and it started up the full load, Dad pinned the M's Ears back and it cleared right up and we went to work grinding.

The stage II Super H was just enough bigger that it would pull the grinder but it was absolutely everything it wanted, if an ear went thru the burrs wrong it would pull down to 1200-1400 rpm but would catch up and run 1650 in a couple seconds. We ground with the SH for a couple weeks one winter and it never died.

We put the 4010 diesel on the grinder by mistake one mprning, it had the stock muffler with full extension outlet, blew exhaust up between the floor joists of the overhead grain bins, exhaust came straight back down, cooling fan blew exhaust back where I was scooping corn and in about a minute or two I was coughing and hacking, seeing stars, So the 4010 sat all winter unused after that. Didn't start at all well unless you kept the block heater plugged in for a day before you needed it anyhow.

I'd look for something bigger, around 60+hp to run your grinder. Neighbor had an Owatonna mix-mill I think it was. He had a real strong WD-45 Allis that he tore the pto out of running the grinder, he never even hooked his 630 Deere to it, used his 4020 turbo to grind with all the time because he hauled feed a mile to his other farm summer and winter and it had the cab with the heater.

(quoted from post at 04:06:33 04/11/18) Wow,guys are running these things with awful small tractors. Are we talking grinder/mixer here? My three 55 +/- horse tractors will run mine,but I really prefer at least 90,and even then I can make one smoke if I'm pushing ear corn in as fast as it'll take it.

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We ran our John Deere and Farmhand grinder-mixers with either a 3020 (most of the time), or a 4020. In a pinch, we used the Farmall H. Just had to put the ear corn to it a little slower.

Pros: It'll probably go cheap because of the cons.
Cons: No parts aside from any standard bearings, chains, or belts.

Ground a lot of feed with an old IHC M and got along good. Not ear corn, but mostly milo and a little shelled corn, with a NH 355 grinder/mixer. Later used the 4020 as a matter of convenience and fuel economy.

Well, I would not be happy with anything in the 25-30 hp range on a grinder mixer. A few times I have used my 170 Allis Chalmers (55hp), and it worked the tractor very hard. My 6070 Allis Chalmers (70hp) does a pretty good job, but the 4020 John Deere (95hp) is the tractor I have that actually works best. It will really slug a grinder and tractor down hard if you don't have enough power. With a good power supply, both will run along very smoothly. Maybe it could be done with your 25hp tractor, but it will be SLOW going. I like to be able to feed the grinder at a steady pace shoveling in ear corn with a grain scoop.

Depending on the size of the mill Half of your horsepower will be soaked up running the mill empty. That leaves 12 hp for grinding. I ran a Arts-way 320 grinder mixer once in awhile with a Deere A running 36 hp just to warm the tractor up good but it took forever to get a 2 1/2 ton load. I usually ground with the 1086 at 135 hp, much faster.

A lot of M's and super M's ground a lot of feed. I ran an arts way 1250 for 20 years with the same 70 HP tractor which was more than needed but the Hydro 70 was in my opinion one of the best chore tractors ever made.

Through-out the 70s we ground with a Gehl 95 and Farmall 560. It was a good combo. gm

Whew, 25 pto hp, that's light. We fed the mixer mill slower because of the 35 hp tractor. Ear corn is hard to hammer through, shelled corn and oats and the like went through a lot easier might have worked with 25hp if you fed slow.. But only 25hp, that would be pretty tough.

Basically you will be able to get the mill spinning. The big flywheel and fast spinning hammers will store a lot of energy.

When you add grain, it will take away energy. The mill starts slowing down, until you are adding as much energy as is being used.

I think you might be a few hp too low to make it work satisfactory. If another bigger tractor is available, or in the plans, wouldn't hurt to try it, you can probably sell it for what you pay for it so not out much.

Basically running a feed mill with an ihc H, that is light......

Paul

Thanks for all the input. Learned quite a bit.

The dc that I have was always the grinder/mixer tractor til we got the Bearcat grinder/ mixer, that thing took a lot of power, and it was very heavy. It would work our 970 hard. We could use the dc on it, but it was slow.

Ya,we used to run the old belt driven hammer mill with an SC. Then I had a PTO driven John Deere 10A and could run that with a three plow tractor alright,but you need a lot of patience to run a grinder mixer with much less than 90 horses.