Winterizing your feed mill
Management of the feed mill during wintertime can bring several challenges. However, planning and monitoring the weather conditions can ensure that the facility is running efficiently and safely
By Wilmer Pacheco, Adam Fahrenholz and Charles Stark
As winter approaches, it is essential to ensure smooth feed manufacturing operations, prevent equipment damage or disruptions in feed production, and provide for the safety of employees during the colder months of the year. Maintenance personnel should inspect and perform preventive or corrective maintenance on equipment, particularly equipment located outside and in high places (e.g., motors, bearings, belts on the head of bucket elevators, turn heads, etc.) or with limited access. Staff should also inspect electrical connections and ensure they are protected from moisture and cold temperatures. A complete facility walk-through should be completed to make sure any door gaps or openings greater than ¼” are sealed to prevent rodents seeking shelter from the cold weather from entering the facility, and to reiterate that operators and housekeeping personnel need to be cleaning up any ingredients and feed spills as quick as possible.
A good inventory of parts (rolls, pellet dies, gear boxes, belts, and other necessary supplies) and relationships with customers, ingredients and parts suppliers, and employees will go a long way towards developing contingency plans to resolve issues that might arise during wintertime. This is also a good time to review your equipment data and repair records to define the parts necessary to maintain feed mill operations in case of a breakdown. Since staying updated on weather forecasts is made easy these days through the use of apps and websites, these should be leveraged to help plan production, ingredient receiving, and employee shifts as necessary. Make sure employees are trained on safety procedures (e.g., working around the equipment in freezing conditions, slip and falls prevention, etc.) and provide them proper clothing if they are performing activities outdoors. Consider having de-icing materials available in case they are needed.
Regarding regular feed manufacturing operations, you might need to make changes in the conditioning, pelleting, and cooling processes to ensure feed quality and quantity as well as animal performance. Remember, mash entering in the conditioner during the winter months is colder compared to other seasons of the year, and as a result more steam (heat and moisture) needs to be applied to reach the target conditioning temperature (e.g., 185°F or 85°C). Therefore, it is important to ensure that the steam distribution systems are well insulated and that steam traps are efficiently removing the condensate.
Typically, the moisture content of conditioned mash entering the pelleting chamber is higher during the winter, which increases the likelihood of roll slips. Using a pellet die with a lower compression ratio (relationship between die effective thickness and diameter of the hole) can help to maintain similar target conditioning temperatures during the winter, but attention must be paid to ensure pellet quality is not negatively affected beyond allowable limits.
Since more heat and moisture are injected into the conditioner, and the temperature of the air entering the cooler is lower, the cooler/drier operation must also be modified to remove heat and moisture efficiently. Bed depth can be increased to enhance the temperature and therefore the water holding capacity of the air entering the drying zone, which increases its drying capacity. Alternatively, some feed mills use heat exchangers to increase the temperature of the air entering the cooler during winter months. Using a temperature sensor and a moisture analyzer post-cooler can help to monitor both variables and modify either airflow or pellet bed depth to ensure pellet temperature is 5 to 10°F above ambient temperature and the moisture is similar to the mash moisture after the mixer.
Finally, remember to continue testing and analyzing the nutritional content of incoming ingredients and adjust feed formulations as necessary to fulfill animal requirements, which change according to the season. As an example, animals require more dietary calories during the colder months of the year due to higher maintenance requirements for body temperature regulation.
Management of the feed mill during wintertime can bring several challenges. However, planning and monitoring the weather conditions can ensure that the facility is running efficiently and safely throughout the winter season and that feed of high physical and nutritional quality is always in front of the animals.
