Chop/Bale System For Paper Bedding

Chop/Bale System for Paper Bedding MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 14-6-16 Newspaper makes better bedding than straw, according to many farmers who've tried it. They say it's up to 50 percent more absorbent and dissolves completely once it gets into a slurry system. Wisconsin dairy farmer Vince Hundt first tried paper for bedding after the drought of 1988 when conventional bedding material was in short supply. In the process of creating his own paper bedding he came up with a paper-to-baled-bedding system that married up a Valby wood chipper to a Deere square baler. It worked so well he decided to offer the chop/bale system for sale. Response was so strong he has since sold his dairy herd. "Interest is tremendous. I'm selling them all over the country both to farmers who need bedding or who want to start a sideline business, and to communities that have been forced to shut down landfills and begin recycling. It does a far better job than other commerical systems selling for $200,000 or more, and is a lot easier to operate," says Hundt. The system consists of a Valby chopper that blows chopped-up paper into a "cyclone" tank mounted above the feeder auger on a Deere square baler, which then makes normal-sized, 60-lb. bales. Hundt sells the system as a complete package or makes any of the components available separately. The Valby chopper, which is built in Finland, is the best machine available for chopping paper, according to Hundt, be-cause of its disk-type cutter assembly that produces flaked paper that will not wrap around animals' feet. Whole bundles of paper are fed into the chopper - you don't even have to remove the twine. The chop-per is unique in that it can also be used to chop plastic and wood. Hundt says many communities who've bought his system for recycling run all plastic waste through the chipper, reducing its volume as much as 15 times. The key to the the system is the cyclone tank between the chopper and baler. Air enters the side of the tank and swirls around inside, allowing paper to drop down into the baler while air goes up out the top. The cyclone can be mounted on any baler but Hundt says most buyers have opted for Deere balers because they have feeder augers rather than packing arms. Augers can better handle the constant flow of material and packing arms make it more difficult to mount the tank. As far as he knows, no one has tried making big round bales of paper. "We can make 75 uniformly chopped, consistently tight 60-lb. bales per hour. Bales flake apart easily for spreading. Many cities give the chopped paper to farmers for free, or sell it at a low price, because it can cost more than $100 a ton to bury it in landfills," says Hundt. The Valby chopper and Deere baler can both be powered by tractor pto or by stationary electric or gas motors. At one installation, for example, the chopper is powered by a 50 hp. 3-phase electric motor and the baler by a 15 hp. motor. A paper-baling kit for a Deere baler sells for $6,825. A pto-powered Valby chopper sells for $7,375. For more information, contact: FARM SHOW Followup, PCR Inc., Rt.1, Box 392, Coon Valley, Wis. 54623 (ph 608 452-3651).

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