VI. MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS OF HUSBANDRY (cont.)

Corn Bruiser and Grinding Mill. Cake Crushers. Chaff Cutters.

Corn Bruiser and Grinding Mill

The now frequent use of various kinds of grain in the fattening of live stock creates a necessity for machines to prepare it for this purpose, wither by breaking, bruising, or grinding. A profusion of these, to be worked by hand, is everywhere to be met with. Such machines are always most economically worked by steam or water power. When that can be had, a set of rollers for bruising oats or linseed, and millstones to grind the inferior grain of the farm, form a most valuable addition to barn machinery.

Cake Crushers

Machines for breaking linseed-cake into large pieces for cattle, or smaller ones for sheep, are now in general use. The breaking is performed by passing the cakes between serrated rollers, by which it is nipt into morsels. These are usually driven by hand; but it is always expedient to have a pulley attached to them, and to take advantage of mechanical power when available.

Chaff Cutters

The use of this class of machines has increased very much of late years. Fodder when cut into lengths of from half-an-inch to an inch is somewhat more easily masticated than when given to animals in its natural state; but the chief advantages of this practice are, that it prevents waste, and admits of different qualities – as of hat and straw, straw and green forage, or chaff and pulped roots --- being so mixed that animals cannot pick out the one from amongst the other, but must ear the mixture as it is presented to them. Such cut fodder also forms as excellent vehicle in which to give meal or brushed grain, either cooked or raw, to live stock. This applies particularly to sheep feeding on turnips, as they then require a portion of dry food, but waste it grievously when it is not thus prepared. Chaff-cutters are constructed on a variety of plans; but the principle most frequently adopted is that of radial knives bolted to the arm of a fly-wheel, which work across the end of a feeding-box fitted with rollers, which draw forward the straw or hay and present it in a compressed state to the action of the knives. A machine on this principle, made by Cornes of Barbridge, has gained the first premium in its class at recent meetings of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. Gillets guillotine chaff-cutter is an exceedingly ingenious and efficient machine, performing its work with great accuracy, and without frequent sharpening of its one double-edges knife. These machines are most economically worked by the power used for thrashing. The most convenient site for them is in the upper loft of the straw-barn, where the straw can be supplied with little labour, and the chaff either shoved aside, or allowed to fall as it is cut through an opening in the floor into the apartment below, and at once conveyed to other parts of the homestead. The practice on some farms where there is a fixed steam-engine, is to thrash a stack of oats in the forenoon, and so cut up the straw and bruise or grind the grain simultaneously, in the afternoon.






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