Abstract:The formula for a total mixed rations (TMR) was designed by animal nutrition experts and included roughage chopped to an appropriate length, concentrates, and various additives that were fully mixed in certain proportions. There were two main methods currently utilized for silage storage: in a silage pit and in silage bales. On the basis of the existing vertical feed mixer, the self-propelled TMR mixer with the loader and conveyor was developed, the scheme of this designed self-propelled TMR mixer was put forward, and the practicability of the prototype was verified. Silage bales wrapped with a stretchable film was widely used in the animal husbandry industry to remove the bottleneck when preparing silage straw feed. The current methods to manually remove the stretchable films or the use of machines with a plurality of single functions were time-consuming. Therefore, a bale splitter matched with a self-propelled TMR mixer that provided the functions of bale gripping and cutting, material loading, and film removal was designed to realize integrated feeding in the pasture with high efficiency. The self-propelled hydrostatic driving system was adopted, and the selfpropelled TMR mixer realized the combined functions of reclaiming and conveying of material in the silage pit, mixing of roughage and concentrate, transporting and discharging of rations, selfpropelled TMR mixers like that considered here played an important role in speeding up the utilization of crop straw as feed. This constituted one component of the implementation of a policy of ‘grain to feed’ with the aim of alleviating the problems arising when people and livestock compete for grain. The test results showed that the maximum height and width of reclaiming reached 5000mm and 2000mm, respectively, the average preparation time was 23.7min. The mixing uniformity was 91.1%, the production efficiency of TMR was 29.6m3/h, the residual rate of unloading was 0.7%, and the removal rate of the waste film was 98.4%, which met the stipulated requirements and provided a reference for further design of the equipment.
