Getting Grain

Welcome back!

Last week I told you I would show you how we trim hooves, but we needed grain for the animals this week.

I thought you might like to see where we get our grain, and a little bit about how we pick it up.

We drive down to Leland Mills in Spanish Fork.
That's not our truck, there are many farmers who buy their grain here.

This is opposite of the store.
These are grain elevators.
This is where all the grain is stored.

This is what a grain elevator looks like on the inside.

Diagram found here

When we get to the mills we need to weigh our empty truck. The scales don't look like your bathroom scales, do they. This scale is very long. The worker reads the scale inside the office and marks it down on a piece of paper.

After they write down the weight of our truck we drive around to the truck that has the chicken feed in it. 

The arm of the truck pours the grain into the barrels while they are in the back of the truck.
It doesn't take long to fill them.

Next we drive around to the scales so they can weigh the truck again. They make a note of how much more the truck weighs so they know how much chicken feed we got.

We need grain for the goats, too.
The barrels have to be unloaded from the truck and taken into the big grain barn.
We can't drive the truck into the big barn, it's not allowed.

The grain barn is huge! There are piles of grain in different areas.
Each area has a different kind of grain.

The grain piles have walls between them so they don't mix too much.

The workers who are inside the barn need to wear a mask because
breathing grain dust is not good for you.


The grain comes out of the shoot so fast that it fills up the big barrel in about 5 seconds.
That is so fast that I almost didn't get a video of it!
I wasn't allowed to get very close because I don't work here.

The barrels with grain for the goats needs to be loaded onto our truck.

Those barrels are heavy!

They weigh the truck again. The new weight tells them how much
grain we got for the goats.

The scale is read in the office while we are in the truck.

The last thing we do is pay for the grain. It's just like paying for groceries.

We drive our truck home full of grain, unload the big barrels with our tractor, and put the barrels in the barn.

We only have to go to Leland Mills every 2 months because those barrels hold quite a bit of grain.

This time we got 5 barrels of grain. We got three barrels of grain for the goats. How many barrels did we get for the chickens?

I hope you enjoyed our visit to Leland Mills!

Next week I'll show you how we trim the goat's hooves. I hope we can show you how we trim the cat claws, too. 

Have a great week!