Design Of A Forage Chopper Machine

        ABSTRACT
In the dry season harvest residue and grasses like maize Stover, sorghum Stover, elephant grass etc. are being used to feed ruminant animal. The crop residue can be fed to the animal directly, as they are collected from the farm or chopped into pieces in such way that it will be palatable for the ruminant animal. The current practice by the small and medium scale livestock farmers to collect and cut the crop residue using machetes, knives, sickle and other crude method is very cumbersome.
    In this work, a motorized forage chopper was developed and tested to chop the forage and other crops residue in the wet and dry condition for silage making. Forage chopper consist of a solid circular shaft, cutting unit, hopper, discharge outlet and  frame.  It utilize 2.2kw (3hp) electric motor  to drive 0.3mm diameter shaft on which the cutting unit is carried and rotate at a constant speed of 1490-rpm via a v-belt pulley drive mechanism.
    The average chopping efficiency for fresh and dry material was 62 and 70% respectively. The average chopping rate for wet and dry material were 0.23 and 0.28kg/min. these value indicate that the machine perform better with dry material than the wet material whereas the average length cut of the material was 20-25mm.This length makes it suitable for the preparation of dry season animal feeds with the chopped crop residues as major components and minerals, and vitamins as constituents. The machine is easy to operate and maintain. This is a remarkable improvement over manual chopping of forage.