Old-time veg chopper for livestock feed.

I would really like to grow some large vegetables like tillage radish and mangel beets for livestock but am trying to track down a piece of equipment to efficiently chop them smaller. Only I don’t know what this is called. I remember having seen, and I can’t recall if this was on TV/movies or if I saw them years ago at farm auctions, but there is a thing with a hopper you feed the veg into and then you crank it or something and the feed goes through a chopper and comes out in smaller chunks. It’s an old-timey thing that is human powered. That part is important as we are off grid?

Anyone know what these are called? I am having zero success searching for it and suspect that is in part due to not knowing the name.

I know this is not what you are looking for but a food processor would do that.

Lately, I have been using a french fry cutter for different food items.

the food processor has a hopper as you mentioned and the one I had had several different blades:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/how-to/packages/shopping/product-reviews/best-food-processors

I've always heard them called food processors growing up, but here's a pic of a manual that calls it a "food cutter."

Human power has distinct limits. Can you describe the size?

Is it like a meat grinder that you clamp onto a countertop and crank by hand?

Or is it like a mandoline where there is a blade fixed on a board and you move the veg (carefully) over it? Some of the old ones could handle a whole cabbage and were remarkably efficient.

I used to use a gasoline powered wood chipper/shredder and it worked amazingly. For stalks like corn, I used the chipper, but for other items like bean plants, I used the top where the leaves were dumped in and shredded up. I even mixed in alfalfa cubes to get a nice blended meal for my sheep. It beat everything smoothly, then blew it out the bottom where it was raked up and fed to my animals.

Mine was called a Troybilt Tomahawk, but there are new versions being made of similar wood chipper/shredders.

If you do not want to buy one, just make one out of a gasoline powered push lawnmower, All you need to do is drill a 3-4 inch hole (or cut one with a grinder that is square or triangular) through the top of the deck out near where the sharp edge of the blade rotates. It will shred anything you need it too.

Some interesting ideas there! The modified lawn mower probably comes closest to the scale of what I had in mind. I am thinking of something that would chop vegetables to supplement the diet of 5 goats (all likely to kid in spring so we’d have more next winter) and our overwintering flock of about 30 chickens/geese. I have both a food processor and a french fry cutter but am looking at something more than kitchen scale. We have a wood chipper that runs off the tractor PTO but I think that is too big, and also impractical to be constantly switching implements as I would think the ideal would be to grind up fresh fodder for morning and evening feedings. We currently feed lots of vegetables by smashing items like pumpkins or melons, and of course leafy greens are fine. But even normal sized beets or cucumbers are often not eaten or only partly eaten if fed intact.

My hope is to grow mangel beets that are about the size of a five gallon bucket. So those need something fairly substantial for the chopping. As noted a small chipper/shredder could work. It might be overkill.

Ideally it would be a dedicated implement that does not require fuel or electricity and can sit in the feed room and not have to be cleaned after each use.  

I did find this link for a homemade version to run off a small electrical motor. I am not quite mechanically minded enough to be able to build it from the info given but it is a start.
https://smallfarmersjournal.com/homemade-beet-grinder/

And also found this thread which shows a low tech option and the old time hand cranked type which is what I had in mind originally.
http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=60457

Andrea Locke wrote:My hope is to grow mangel beets that are about the size of a five gallon bucket. So those need something fairly substantial for the chopping. As noted a small chipper/shredder could work. It might be overkill.

You know, I chop up a lot of big, tough stuff with a sharpened shovel or spade. It goes through beets and winter squash like butter. A full length handle gives you the leverage and mass to chop efficiently. If that was done in a wooden trough, feeding would be easy. I keep an upside down paving brick on the ground close by and just run the shovel edge over it using the long handle and my weight to freshen up the crude edge. Takes about 10 seconds and works great!

Douglas, that is probably the solution we will use for now. I did see a rather nice purpose-built cutting tool with S-shaped blades at one of those links I attached to an earlier post. My mother had a much smaller straight-bladed version of that for chopping onions. You would plunge it up and down in a container of just slightly larger diameter and it diced quite effectively.

I’ve learned today that ‘beet chopper’ is one name for the machine I had in mind. I will keep my eyes open for one in antique shops or farm auctions as they seem quite useful. Here’s a link to a video of a really old one at what looks like a farm museum.  I am pretty sure I have seen others which are all metal.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8xYz0V7W_TM

This! I think this is exactly what I need.

Now to find or make one!

 

Wow, that is one crazy cool piece of hardware!

Hi Andrea,
I agree with Douglas, that is a really cool piece of machinery. Back when they were still building tools for small sized farms instead of only have home sized or commercial sized.

I know you are asking about cutting up big beets and other root veg... I just have to be a little out-of-the-box and ask if you need the big veg? Does growing a large beet and then chopping it up every morning and every evening actually save you any time or money? Or would you be better off growing smaller veggies that don't need to be cut?

Matt, I have to admit I am wooed by the appeal of growing the big radishes and beets that were the traditional storage crops for winter livestock feed. We’re working to reduce our dependence on purchased grain (and hay - will be storing more tree hay next year). From a storage standpoint there may be benefits to those big veggies - I suspect those preindustrial farmers didn't develop them just for fun but had good reason. I haven't grown or stored them yet so I can’t speak to that from experience.

That said, the same purpose to a large extent could most likely be met by growing normal sized garden veggies and the climate here most of the year is conducive to storing them in the ground for harvest in winter. So larger varieties that I suspect might store best in a root cellar may not be absolutely required, as we may be able to make do with in ground storage except for the month or two of real winter we might get.

But even with the normal sized veggies we supplement as feed now, we find chopping them greatly reduces waste. So the chopper would be helpful regardless. We’re feeding goats, chickens and geese. Other critters might be more inclined or able to put in the work.

Another reason for us to consider growing giant root vegetables is soil improvement. Our soil is rocky, nutrient poor, sandy uphill, clayish downhill, and eroded. It needs loosening and organic matter, which is something these big tillage radishes are known for. Ideally for tillage you leave the biomass in the soil to rot. But even if we pull some of them to feed, some will remain to improve the soil, and the holes left from the ones we pull and their root exudates will be doing good for the soil. Stacked functions. :)

I wonder too if these big root veg are pulling nutrients from much deeper in the soil. If you’ve seen the tillage radishes on Gabe Brown YouTubes, the root systems are spectacular. If that’s the case it would be great for the soil and also maybe reduce the need for buying in mineral supplements for the goats.

Might something like an apple masher/scratter work for softer veggies? Soaking harder root veggies and squash might make them workable in a masher too.

Ben Zumeta wrote:Might something like an apple masher/scratter work for softer veggies? Soaking harder root veggies and squash might make them workable in a masher too.

Possibly. The general idea seems similar. I had to look up apple scratter and found this
https://canadahomebrews.ca/2021/02/02/diy-cider-press-and-cider-making/
Which shows the inside of the hopper of their homemade wooden scratter. I imagine with some playing around with spacing and sizes of the screws in the roller this might be able to shred a harder vegetable vs turning apples into mash. Actually, an apple masher would be useful for us too. Apart from the quantity of apples we produce being a lot for a countertop juicer, the goats aren’t very keen on chomping into whole apples and we don’t want them to choke. So we end up cutting those for them too.