Last silo empty

[tomstractorsandtoys]

I just emptied my haylage silo last night. No more messing with a wore out Badger unloader or climbing a dirty haylage chute. From now on all silage will be in bags. We have our own bagger and I also have a nice stone pad to put the bags on so no mud. We make about 5 7x150 ft bags a year. Tom

 

[ADB-Ia]

I remember when dad went from a dirt (mud in the spring) bottom pit silo to a 20 x 70 upright silo with a Clay unloader. We thought we had the world by the tail. That silo chute was a dirty climb but it sure beat loading silage out of that pit silo with a pitch fork. Dad fed 150 to 200 head at a time and we had to pitch silage before school every morning. The good old days!

 

[rrlund]

How much trouble is it with all that plastic? I know a guy who ground his corn and put that in one. He said you need a guy there with a shovel to keep shoveling it to the center when you're taking it out. One good sized dairy here used them and had a kind of a clam bucket that closed horizontally to squeeze the feed and pull it in from the edges. They had several Harvestores and went to the bags, but they have gone entirely to concrete bunkers. That's what I went to back in the 90s.

 

[Hoofer B]

What do you feed it to? Bill

 

[flying belgian]

Any time time you can make your life easier,,,do it.

 

[tomstractorsandtoys]

We have beef cows and finish our calves.

 

[tomstractorsandtoys]

The plastic is a little bit of a pain to keep after. I make a pile in the corner of the machine shed and every few weeks take it to a dumpster for silage plastic to be recycled in our township. As far as feeding we let the bottom long and with a skid loader you can scoop it without much shoveling especially corn silage. With haylage I tear it up some with a bale spear to make it easier to scoop. Bunkers are good if you have some help but often I fill 4 wagons then go unload myself. On bigger operations the bunker is most likely better. Tom

 

[Bruce from Can.]

I liked the bags too. I had bunks, but if I was going to have surplus corn, Id hire in a bagging machine and fill a bag. The bagger that was available to me had a 10 foot bag i think 200 long. The guy that owned the bagger said at the moisture my corn was, he had the tester so I took his word for it. The full bag should hold 360 tons of corn silage. It was top quality feed.

 

[rrlund]

I fill my 30x80 alone. I have two rear dump wagons. I'll load them, go home and dump both, then push it back. By the last 4 loads of the day, I can dump two and go right back to chop the last two. After supper, I'll spend more time pushing and packing it better. I can usually fill it in 7-9 days by myself. What else do I have to do with my time?

 

[ADB-Ia]

The farm I rented for 42 years had a 36x120 bunker silo that I filled with haylage for the cows and their calves that I finished out every year. Chopping was always one of my favorite jobs on the farm. Everything had to run in sync to keep the machines running. I'd cut hay in the morning to chop the next day. My dad would run the chopper, my father-in-law (or my sons when they were old enough to drive and before they headed off to college) would haul loads in - I used dump wagons. And I would level the haylage and pack it with the loader tractor. We would aim for 20 loads a day. Things didn't work as well after first my dad, then my father-in-law, could no longer help. The family that rents the farm now round bale everything so the bunker sits unused.

 

[NY 986]

Bags make the most sense especially if the removal rate is low. I know guys that can stay ahead of spoilage by only removing a couple feet per day under 65 degrees F. Bunker is great if you have a large herd and are efficient in terms of construction versus cost. The upright silo was always a nostalgia with me but the reality is they deteriorate over time, unloader is a expensive and limited use machine and as we age climbing will be more hazardous. Never had to unplug a blower pipe as I was young when the dairy cows left.

 

[Geo-TH,In]

My dad made a bunker silo.
We used an old JD D tractor to pack the silage. Used an old Farmall H with a loader to put silage in cows feed trough.
We used a silo blower to blow the silage into the bunker.

The corn that made good grain was picked.
The corn that didn't make good grain got chopped up and put in the silo.

 

[Centerplate]

You can get a dumpster from Revolutuion Plastic to recycle all that film.


https://www.revolutioncompany.com/

 

[caterpillar guy]

Back when we bagged feed. We cut the hay bags along the sides at the ground then the rest worked good for covering round bales when we had more than we could get inside. The ground ear corn bag we cut on the bottom in the middle worked good for hay also. Silage would feed out with a loader pretty decent.Hay was another animal tough to load out with the bucket unless you had the sides back some. For the ear corn I made a frame from old 3/8's water pipe so the plastic was not dwon in the way and helped with unloading. The augers in the parlor would not take the ground ear corn without some shelled corn to help make it feed down better so we mixed it with the feed grinder along with minerals and soybean meal. Our bags were 8x150 and they claimed we could get about a ton per foot in them. We put up 7 bags per year. 3corn silage 3 haylage and 1 ground ear corn.

 

[Blackhole49]

What will happen to the silo?