Silage

[Cowmansam]

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.......

Was at an old mate of mines few years ago when the neighbour came to combi drill in his 4 acres of barley for him he said used to take his father a week to plough Harrow and spread seed Harrow again and roll that field with a pair of horses the lad had it done in less than an hour taking his time as it’s a small tricky field and he likes it worked right up to the hedges

 

[egbert]

You can but it will take a lot more compacting

I knew a fella roll his pit with a Drott dozer.
That compacted!
(to the extent he could cut it out again...)

 

[upnortheast]

When I was a young un we had something called a green crop loader. poor bugger with a graip in the trailer leveling it out.
Then level out by hand on the pit then roll & roll.
horrible acidic stuff in winter.
Give me precision chop every time

Just found this vid

 

[tr250]

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

Yes probably but then the amount of threads on here that people want to chop bales into a feeder wagon in the winter because you can’t mix anything else with it or they pull it all through the feed fence. Chopped is the only answer in my book

 

[Sid]

If they did not chop it so much they would not need a 1000 HP

You can chop it fine without the hp, you just won't get the throughput

 

[Tarw Coch]

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.

IIRC the use of acid wasn’t to aid fermentation but to pickle the grass for want of a better word.
Not that I’ve any experience of using acid, Add F I think it was

 

[H200GT]

I often think that for breeding cattle / dry cattle high quality silage is far to potent in winter, ends up coming straight out of the back of them.

IMO they do just as well on good quality hay with the added bonus of needing far less bedding.

For store cattle or dairy is obviously a completely different matter.

 

[neilo]

Works in a bale ?

And chopped bales are supposed to ferment better due to the oxygen being excluded better. No different to clamps.

 

[neilo]

The early forage wagons didn't chop much and they made excellent silage.

We had some second cut done with a forage wagon when they first came out. It was awful stuff as we couldn’t get the air out of it properly.
It was put in the pit over the top of the first cut, which had been picked up with a SPF, and it was like chalk and cheese.

Probably ok for some second rate suckler cow fodder, but not for a dairy ration, where you want to make as good a fodder as possible.

 

[ollie989898]

Neil illustrates the issue- the cost (and value) of forage these days is astronomical so it needs to be done right every time.

 

[Hilly]

Neil illustrates the issue- the cost (and value) of forage these days is astronomical so it needs to be done right every time.

Very difficult the weather we get nower days

 

[puntabrava]

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 ?

Jesus hilly, you need a larger workload

 

[Hilly]

Jesus hilly, you need a larger workload

Just thinking like

 

[puntabrava]

Very difficult the weather we get nower days

The forecast for us hard arsed southerners has suddenly changed to heavy rain on Monday from 15 days of dry weather yesterday, we can only dream about living in the temperate borders.

 

[Hilly]

The forecast for us hard arsed southerners has suddenly changed to heavy rain on Monday from 15 days of dry weather yesterday, we can only dream about living in the temperate borders.

You fannys wouldn’t stand the winter .

 

[som farmer]

I often think that for breeding cattle / dry cattle high quality silage is far to potent in winter, ends up coming straight out of the back of them.

IMO they do just as well on good quality hay with the added bonus of needing far less bedding.

For store cattle or dairy is obviously a completely different matter.

we were very short of fodder, and for the last 2 winters, have fed a lot of hay to the milkers, quite suprised really, they did a lot better than expected, aiming for 7500 litres/cow, not 10,000+ though, and what we had of our own, was pretty good, they were getting 8 kg/day. This yr no shortage, and hoping to make 60acres of hay.
We used to buck rake grass into an outside clamp, covered it in chalk to seal it. As with many farms, some silage had quite a whiff. Then double chop, and add f, and covered clamps, add f was marvellous, in covering many errors, but was a very good insurance. Then direct cut, in iffy weather, wet grass usually made good silage, probably because you could roll it down tight, effluent, used to pour out, some farmers let it into troughs, for the cows to drink. All that, and look at where we are today, what a change.
4 years back, with a dry spring, we had quite a few 'lumps' of dung, spread earlier, not really washed in. As worried. we used formic acid, silage was really good, contractor, not particularly happy, and said he wouldn't use it again, but it was a once only job.

 

[puntabrava]

You fannys wouldn’t stand the winter .

What - 10, ohh please would you hold my hand

 

[Cowmansam]

I’d be more arsed about the never ending rain bloody miserable

 

[som farmer]

The forecast for us hard arsed southerners has suddenly changed to heavy rain on Monday from 15 days of dry weather yesterday, we can only dream about living in the temperate borders.

just checked, the lying barstewards, if only we could hold them to account.
there again, they will probably change their minds, 3 or 4 times by monday, good job we only cut 25 acres for hay, not the 45 we had planned to. At least we have the option of wrapping it now, l can remember try to burn the horrible black grass, in line, and not very successfully.

 

[puppet]

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.

Take a rock 10x10x10 cm, smash it into small bits then try and fit all the pieces into same size container. Does chopped silage work like that needing more volume?

Anyway we used to direct chop grass into the trailer, buckrake just tipped it in heaps in the pit and 2 men with forks spread it out. Rolled it for a day until a sticky mess over the top 4 inches and no sheet, just a roofed pit. Sometimes put wee straw bales over it. Had to use a silage knife to cut the face in winter which was a perfect tool for amputating toes.
Silage looked OK once through the 6 inches of waste but never analysed back then.