Keenan moves to a horizontal design for its mixer wagon

Keenan Alltech Mix Mill, Brayden Van Driestan

Keenan Alltech is going in a different direction with mixer wagons, literally. The company is gong horizontal rather than vertical with its mixer.

Field editor Dale Leftwich was at Ag in Motion last month and got a chance to talk to Keenan’s western Canadian sales manager, Brayden Van Driesten, about what can happen when you change the way you roll. (Story continues below)

Van Driesten says having the mixer horizontal, rather than vertical, eliminates dead spots in the machine. A dead spot is a place where the feed does not actually get mixed. In order to have more consistent feed, you need to have fewer dead spots. And if you can have no dead spots, you can have the most consistent feed.

It is also very important, when you want to have consistent feed, to have uniform chop length. Another feature of the Keenan Alltech mixer wagon is that it has stationary knives at the bottom of the machine to cut feed to a more uniform length. “We are getting more consistent chop length throughout the whole mix,” according to Van Driesten. “The cows end up sorting less and gaining more.”

With Keenan Alltech mixer wagon the mixing chamber is separate from the unloading auger. With the feed being drawn from the entire length of the machine, the consistency created in the mixer, is then carried forward through unloading auger.

The mixer has load cells so that feed can be weighed as it is unloaded. “Every Keenan that is out there has opportunity to have the InTouch system. The InTouch system is a feed management system that allows you to record each ingredient as well as upload different rations.”

The InTouch system can be controlled manually, with the remote control, or even with a smart phone. The weights can be collected and then stored on cloud-based storage. In this way you can know what your cattle are being fed, even if you are away and the hired staff is doing the feeding.

The Keenan Alltech mixer wagons are also designed to use fewer horsepower than other mixer wagons. Van Driestan says for the same amount of capacity you should need only one-third of the horsepower of other mixer wagons.

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