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SHAFTER HAY & CUBE PROCESS
A family tradition of quality and service
 To start the harvesting we put machines called Swathers into the field to cut the hay. When cutting the hay the swathers also stack the alfalfa into wind rows. Once the hay has been cut, it lays on the ground to cure or dry. When the side of the wind row that is facing the sun has cured sufficiently we will go in with rakes and rake two wind row together, while flipping them at the same time. When that side of the windrow is dry enough, the alfalfa is ready to be baled or chopped.
The Cubing process begins when we receive the raw product, hay. There are two ways we receive hay at our cuber year.
1) Bale form. We will take the bales and spread them out on the asphalt. Then two guys will go through to cut and pull the twine from the bales. Once all the twine has been removed, we will use a front-end loader to push the hay into a pile. From that pile the hay will then be loaded into a grinder, to chop the hay up into fine pieces.
2) Already Chopped. We will receive hay in the vans that has already been field chopped.
After the hay has been chopped we will load it into the metering bin to begin the cubing process. The Metering bin drops the chopped hay into a conveyer belt that will take it to a mixing bin. In the mixing bin a little bit of and water are added. After it is mixed in mixing bin it is dropped into another conveyer that deposits it into the cubers.
 The cubers consist of a large press wheel that pounds hay through 1 1/4 inch by 1 1/4 inch dies. After it is pounded through the dies, the cubes naturally break off and land on another conveyer belt. This conveyer belt takes the cubes through a metal detector, which will detect all ferrous and non-ferrous metals. After is passes through the metal detector it is then taken into a two-phase cooler. The cooler has three fans on it that blows air through the machine to cool the cubes. From the cooler it is put onto another conveyer that takes it to the storage barn. It stays until it is ready to be delivered, bagged, or sold.
We sell our cubes in bulk or in bags. When it is sold in bulk the customer either comes to our plant, and we load their trailer, or we will load it into our own trailers and deliver. About 65% of our product is delivered.
When we deliver we have two types of trailers. One is a pup trailer, which is dropped off at the customers yard. The pup trailer provides storage for the customer when none is available. The other type of trailer is a walking floor. This trailer will “walk” the product off into the customer’s storage area. We deliver to customer all over California.
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CUBER HOURS
Monday - Friday
7:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Saturday
7:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Closed Sunday
CONTACT INFORMATION
19000 Wildwood Avenue Buttonwillow, CA 93206
Phone:(661)764-5264
Fax:(661)764-5733
info@haycube.com |
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