This winter we’ve been figuring out how to keep feeding the wet distillers grains to our pigs in the below-freezing temperatures. It’s been working out pretty well save for a few little setbacks, but nothing too terrible. That’s pretty good considering that we leave the distillery with what amounts to a ticking ice-bomb.
Even when the distillers grains are hot out of the mash tun, it’s only a matter of time before the Minnesota winter wins out and freezes it all solid.
Hopefully you can unload it all fast enough that it freezes in the stock tanks (where the critters can eat it) instead of freezing in the IBC tote, creating a 2500lb ice cube. Luckily we have dealt with no enormous ice cubes, though it looked like we were getting close a time or two.
So while we’ve managed to get it all in the stock tanks, all of our stock tanks were not created equal. We bought a few different stock tanks to use this winter.
These Behlen Contry tanks that have been in with the feeder pigs aren’t looking so good. This one has been sitting here, a big distillers-grain ice cube for the past month. The grains froze and due to the funky seam at the top of the tank, they’re stuck in there until it warms up enough to melt it out.
And then there’s the second Behlen tank that got this nice little hole knocked out of it.
I won’t be buying anymore of these tanks soon.
Now these High Country Plastics tanks on the other hand.
These are nice stock tanks.
They’ve mainly been used by the sows and boar this winter, and they’re still in great shape. That’s saying something for a piece of plastic that has been between full-grown pigs and their food for a few months.
