Silage

H200GT

Member
Location
NORTH WALES
Well we used to. Dad started by buckraking it off the field straight to the pit. But where do you mount the twin beacons on a Rex Paterson buckrake ?
Apparently thats what Taid used to do, buckrake on the massey 35 and cart each scoop to the shed covered pit. It was only very small scale at the time, but it must have worked. Pit is still on the farm as a shed, and the buckrake was modified to a bale spike when he switched to round bales, thats still about somewhere as well
 
Works in a bale ?

In a bale you don't need to drive over it to get the air out. You are compressing it and then wrapping it in plastic totally sealed, so it will work virtually no matter what you put the bale in. A silage heap is only sealed through sheets. Not only that but a load of unchopped grass will take up much more volume in the pit.
 
I'm not so sure the guys in the days of yore made such ace silage. Granted the weather was better but the science wasn't that hot and they resorted to using things like propionic acid and the like to get it to ferment. How none of them weren't killed by the clouds of ammonia that resulted given the insane amounts of nitrogen used in days gone by I will never know.
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
Why do we chop it ? Why can’t I just load trailers with handler run down row push up a heap load trailer tip in pit repeat ? Why bother with the expensive bit ?
It don't mix in diet feeders if you want the truth , but I suspect long chop is better for the animals , you would need to chop it a little mind to get better compaction , but not a great influence on end quality if it's rolled and seeled quick
 

Cowmansam

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Shropshire
Think if you want to avoid a contractor just make sure your got a good conditioner on the mower and get a old single or double chop outfit or something be quicker and more likely to make decent feed saving a bit in making it can soon turn dear when you left with a load of crap forage
 

Cowmansam

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Shropshire
Agree with Derrick cows would choose a unchopped bale over clamp anyday we have a diet feeder but it doesn’t chop it or mix it much just comes out through beaters onto a belt cows just get on and eat they have teeth never seen the sense in pre chewing there food for them
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Yes, dad took weeks and weeks to gather a small acreage. Not much quicker with a side mounted JF single chop. He would often exclaim after watching the self propelled team next door doing the whole job in 3 hours " That has to be better than taking all summer ....."
Previous owner of our old place used a sunken road as the silage pit. Always had a stream running through the bottom of it. Silage can't have been up to much.......
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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