Most operators who struggle in the first week on a new vertical mixer have one thing in common: they skipped the setup steps because the machine looked ready to go. It was not. The TMR 7010 VT is a capable twin-auger machine, but capability only converts to consistent rations if the foundation work gets done before the first bale goes in. Late winter is exactly the right time to sort this out. Spring will not slow down for a poorly calibrated scale or a door technique that keeps jamming long fibre at the opening.
Day One: Scale Zeroing and Load-Cell Verification
Before anything else, zero the scale on a flat, stable surface with the tractor PTO disengaged and the machine empty. Every batch you mix for the rest of the week traces back to this number. If the tare is wrong by even a few kilograms, each individual ingredient compounds that error, and by the time you are adding high-cost supplements or protein sources, the drift matters.
The 7010 VT carries load cells rated to 10,000 kg (22,046 lb). That capacity exists for a reason. Operators who push machines with lighter-rated cells into full commercial batches accelerate wear on the cells themselves and lose accuracy well before the rated maximum. Here, the headroom is genuine. That said, capacity is not permission to ignore the zeroing procedure.
Check that the machine is not touching any fixed structure, the hitch, a wall, a bunker corner. Any contact point bleeds weight off the cells and gives you a false reading. Some operators in the Free State have found that soft ground on newly thawed pads after cold nights will shift the machine enough to throw the zero. Do the check again if you move between batches and the surface changes.
The scale system is included as standard on the 7010 VT and is programmable to 20 recipes. Set your first ration recipe before you start loading. Having the recipe locked in means you are reading against a target in real time rather than trying to remember ingredient weights mid-batch while the auger is running.
Load Order on the 7010 VT
The sequence in which you load ingredients into a vertical mixer is not arbitrary. Load order determines how quickly long fibre processes and how evenly fine ingredients distribute through the mix.
Start with dry roughage. Bales of hay or straw go in first, when the tub is empty and the augers have maximum clearance to work. The decagonal tub geometry helps here considerably. The flat sidewalls create intermittent contact points that prevent round bales from spinning freely, which forces the auger to cut rather than just chase the bale in circles. Processing starts faster and with less PTO load than it would in a round tub.
Once the roughage is partially processed and the tub has a working bed of fibre, add silage or wet feeds. The moisture content helps pull fine particles down into the mix rather than leaving them sitting on top. Minerals, supplements, and dry concentrates come last, on top of a bed that is already mixing actively. This protects fine particles from being driven straight to the floor before they have a chance to distribute.
The twin-auger design of the 7010 VT adds a third functional mixing chamber in the transfer zone between the front and rear augers. Material moving through that zone is handled by both augers simultaneously, which accelerates homogenisation. This is worth knowing because it means you do not need to extend mix time to compensate for late-added ingredients. Load in the right order and trust the geometry to do the work.
If you are still working out batch sizing for your herd, the VT series loading height and capacity considerations are worth reviewing before you commit to a fixed recipe volume for winter rations.
Discharge Door Technique for Long Fibre
This is where most first-week problems actually happen. The discharge door on the 7010 VT is a side-opening door, and the temptation is to open it fully and let the auger push feed out in one continuous flow. Do that with a high-fibre ration and you will have a partial jam within the first few batches.
Open the door gradually. Start with a partial opening, roughly a quarter to a third, and let the leading edge of the mix find its way out before you widen further. Long fibre that is still processing benefits from the continued auger action inside the tub. If you discharge too early or too wide, you pull unprocessed material out the door before the auger has finished cutting it to length.
The pulse effect of a side door machine is a known characteristic. The auger rotation means feed does not flow in a perfectly smooth stream. It comes in pulses as each auger revolution pushes a fresh volume toward the opening. Work with that rhythm. Spreading that flow evenly along the feed bunk requires moving the tractor at a pace matched to the pulse, not fighting it by opening the door wider.
For rations above 50 percent hay by volume, a front discharge conveyor setup changes the dynamics considerably, though that configuration is available on the HD range rather than the VT series. On the 7010 VT with side discharge, managing door aperture is your primary tool for controlling feed flow and keeping long fibre from bridging. What happens between the mixer and the bunk is worth reading through if you are refining your delivery pass technique.
End-of-Week Inspection: What to Look At Before Wear Sets In
By the end of day five or six, you have enough cycles through the machine to see where clearances are working and where they are not. This inspection is not about finding something broken. It is about catching issues before they become expensive.
Start with the knives. The modular V2 knife system on LEO Agriculture machines uses tungsten-carbide coated replaceable outer edges. You are not replacing the full knife, only the worn section. After a week of commercial mixing, look at the leading edge of each knife for uneven wear. Uneven wear across the knife set usually points to a load balance issue rather than a knife quality issue. Check that you have been loading to a consistent weight each batch and that the roughage bed has been covering the full tub floor before you add wet feed.
Check the kicker next. A kicker that is losing its feed-lifting angle or has moved out of position will extend your mix times and unbalance ration uniformity. The kicker’s job is to move feed back onto the auger consistently. If material is piling at the tub base or taking longer than expected to homogenise, the kicker clearance is the first thing to verify. There is a deeper explanation of why the kicker has an outsized effect on mix quality if you want the full picture.
Finally, walk the tub floor. Look for feed residue that is packing into corners rather than turning over with each batch. In KwaZulu-Natal operations running high-moisture silage through winter, that packing can happen fast. Any buildup on the floor tells you the clearance between the auger flight and the floor is marginal for that ration density. Adjust before it becomes a wear issue on the auger lower, which is a significantly more involved repair than resetting a clearance at week one.
Seven days of mixing data, combined with a methodical end-of-week look at the wear points, gives you a baseline. Everything after that is maintenance against a known standard rather than guesswork.