Boskos - Bos tot Kos Process practical illustration by TOMCAT Wood Chippers

A practical illustration of the Bos-Tot-Kos (Bushfeed) process. From cutting to chipping, mixing to feeding. Footage was captured in field during deliveries and live demonstration days in Namibia.

Bos-tot-kos is when encroaching bush/alien vegetation are cut down and processed into feed for sheep, goats, cattle and game. Producing boskos is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It is hard work and needs dedication. You will need some tools to produce it and it is labour intensive. Despite this, the benefits of producing bushfeed are endless. Here are just a few of the advantages:

- Top quality feed can be produced from a source, that is seen as a weed and a problem to many.
- This top quality feed is at your disposal and won’t cost you a cent.
- Charcoal/Firewood can be produced from the bigger branches and the smaller branches of the bush (which will generally be discarded and left in the field to rot) are utilised by turning them into fodder.
- When you make bushfeed you systematically clear your farm by removing alien vegetation/encroaching bush – creating space for grass to grow when the rain comes.
- It’s an environmentally friendly way of clearing and controlling encroaching bush (instead of burning)
Harvest the selected bush/branches
The following methods can be used to harvest the bush:

Pangas – very cheap and effective, but labour intensive
Chainsaws – high maintenance and unpractical to get into the bush
Brush-cutters – very effective, but require specialised training and have high maintenance/running costs
Bushsaw / Bushcutter – very effective in clearing a large area in a short time, but expensive and need to be used in conjunction with other saws to harvest the individual smaller branches
Tree Shear – extremely quick and effective in cutting down hectares per day, but requires an excavator to power the machine which is a massive capital outlay.
Convert the branches to fibre with the use of a wood chipper/hammer-mill or combination product
When you choose the machine to process the branches it is very important to quantify your needs in terms of the daily amount of chipped product you require. The output of the machine and your budget obviously need to match. Be careful not to purchase a unit which is too small for your needs, working the unit over 75% of it’s capacity or overcapitalising on a machine that is too big for your needs. A standard 125mm to 375mm capacity TOMCAT hydraulic feed wood chipper/ a TOMCAT Screen Chipper with a separate hammer-mill or a TOMCAT Chipper Shredder (wood chipper/hammer-mill combination) can be used to process the branches to fibre.

Create your final product by mixing the chipped product with other ingredients
The typical ingredients that go into the final feed mix are:

Molasses Syrup
Chop/Maize
Salt
Urea
PEG
Pill the final product or take it to the feed bowls immediately
You can either mix it all together on a concrete floor or use a Feed Mixer and then feed it immediately to your animals. You can also use a pill machine to turn the mixed product into pellets, which can be stored for a longer period.
The best time to harvest is when it is growing season and there are plenty of leaves and flowers on the branches. During this time the branches contain highest nutritional value.
Don’t use branches of more than 30mm in diameter for feed as most nutrients are stored in the smaller branches/leaves.
Cut branches as quickly as possible to avoid the build-up of tannins inside the branches. When you cut down branches in one area/tree and take longer than 10 minutes, the tree can release tannins as part of a defense mechanism.
Material that’s harvested and chipped during the growing season can be dried and stored to be used at a later stage when the leaves drop.
A hydraulic-feed wood chipper with a large in-feed opening and aggressive feed roller is necessary to feed this hard, thorny/vine-like material into the chipper. It is also safer to use a hydraulic-feed chipper instead of a gravity-feed one when feeding thorny material into the chipper. Hydraulic feed chippers gets the job done faster, with less effort/hassle and with safety in mind.
Just give a little of this new feed to your livestock in the beginning and as they start to like it you can increase the amount until in a week or two this will be all they eat.
When you mix all the ingredients together, mix just enough together for a one day’s feed, as you need to feed it to your livestock immediately because the Molasses will give a bad taste to it when left for a day and your cattle will not eat it and you waste a lot of food. However, when you pelletize the mixture it will allow you to stockpile the feed.
The total amount of wood included in the mix is between 40% and 80%. Always keep in mind that the feed must be tasty and consist of enough molasses to give the animal energy to process the feed. It must be tasty and consist of the sufficient nutrition.
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