Vacuum Silage

[mealman]

Does anyone have any information on the old style system of making vacuum silage......i am interested in hearing about the technique and perhaps seeing some pictures

 

[Chae1]

@Gerbert had the Hoover out

 

[Rascal]

Can just about remember my father doing this in the 60's. Never seen a clamp shrink so quick!!
Seem to remember it spoiled very quickly once opened and never did it again.

 

[Andy Nash]

My father did it once or twice in the sixties too.
From what I remember the grass was buckraked on to a 1000 gauge plastic ground sheet with a perforated alkathene plastic pipe laid on top which was led out of the clamp and connected to the milking machine pump. The top sheet was tucked under the ground sheet and the vacuum pump switched on for several hours.
I don’t think there was much need to roll the clamp, because the atmospheric pressure of 7.5 psi over the entire top sheet caused It to compact fairly dramatically. I don’t remember any particular problem with spoilage, but it was long ago. We stopped doing it when he built a silo out of Dr Beeching’s railway sleepers.

 

[mealman]

Thank you very much for your replies it is very interesting to hear about these forgotten techniques

 

[Y Fan Wen]

I got the impression that vac silage taught people to seal a clamp properly and then discovering that it was the seal that counted more than the vacuum. I remember an old 4 cylinder engine being pto driven as a vacuum pump. There was a lot of air to pump out of an ordinary size clamp.

 

[mealman]

can anyone remember the name of the company that promoted it/ supplied the kit

 

[tomlad]

Dyson ?

 

[Martin Holden]

There’s a chap on the southern edges of Dartmoor that was a big promoter of vacuum silage. Last I heard of him was early/mid 90’s so not sure he is about. He wrote a couple of books about it and I think did some work with the old IGER at Aberystwyth IIRC

 

[mealman]

thank you very much for the information....you dont know his name and i could maybe search for the books