Yuco Cotton Gin Jan 16

This Cotton Gin is about 5 kilometers from where we are camped so we walked over for a look around

Arizona grows about 5% of the the cotton grown in the US. The yields in Arizona are about twice the national average. Yuma county which supplies his cotton gin grows about  13000 acres annually. It is planted  in February and harvested in September.  Cotton in Arizona yields about 1200 lbs per acre.

At the cotton gin the seeds are removed from the raw cotton picked in the fields. The seeds are sold as animal feed or used to replant. The cotton is then shipped to the spinners, that make the yarn . The yarn is then woven into cloth. 

Yuco cotton gin facility. It is closed now for the season

This is what the cotton looks like when it arrives at the facility. These cotton balls had been blown by the wind up against the fence

Each of these bales weigh 480 lbs. This was the area where the bales were stored before being shipped out

A stock photo of cotton in the field that has not been picked yet.

 

The piles in the background between the 2 buildings are the lint, this is what is left over when they separate the seeds from the cotton. The lint is loaded into large dump trailers and taken somewhere to have the seeds separated from the lint . About 5% of the seeds are are used to replant and the rest becomes animal feed. We have been unable to find out if the lint is used for any thing. It seems to me that it could be used.

The lint that has the seeds in it

The end of another perfect day

The full moon just above the horizon.