Silage making, Dutch style

[Hay Dude]

Over here, we only take trucks in the field on proper tires and planetary axles. Sometimes it works on highway tires, often it just forces you to take winches and excavators out...

On proper 800/45R30.5 tires you can at least push the forage harvester through the wet spots...
Thats what you get, with a 500hp forager and a 430hp Daf (Paccar) MX13 6x6 truck... the forager pilot asking on the CB radio "take it easy, i cant keep up... running out of horsepower"

And these 6x6 trucks started an easy life as a 6x6 dumptruck on regular highway tires, untill they got traded at half a million miles. The contractor who made them, quit last year because his Fendt dealership grew bigger than his contracting branch and he didnt want to compete with his dealerships customers anymore, but the trucks are carrying on at a contractor in the next village

Seems like an epic level of field damage.

 

[Renze]

OP: impressive operation you have, well done & illustrated... in terms of silage itself, please explain the silage process once harvested, how long it takes to break down, & assume it has better nutrient benefits than grazing/hay? basically all microbial i think? (for the benefit of less educated on the subject), regards

Actually no, fresh grazing gets the best nutrients. Some folks feed fresh grass on the stable, with a front mower and a selfloading wagon behind. It just takes work, and a wagon that is always wetted by fresh grass rots harder. Also there are days, after heavy rains, that you shouldnt be in the field, yet you must keep your ration stabile or milk production drops. You cannot be weather depending.

Therefor, a lot of farms just feed ensiled grass year round, so they know exactly what (lab tested) nutrients they feed.

But silage definately has better nutrients than dry hay. You loose sugars when drying to hay.

Once covered in plastic you must leave it closed for about 6 weeks before you can feed it, because the fermentation process must be complete. The fermentation process itself takes some nutrients, which is why fresh grass gives the most nutrients, but is also a greater risk because you have to get it every day, whether field conditions permit it or not.

 

[Renze]

Seems like an epic level of field damage.

It is. But as you see, the crop has fully died off and soon, cobs will drop to the ground. Its a nice yield though. Sometimes you must choose between two evils. Loose this years crop to save soil structure, or loose some yield of next years crop...and time because its difficult to get it off.

 

[big bubba]

interesting topic, sounds like you have the operation well at hand. yrs ago i raised cattle for several years (open range & hay when needed), but know little about silage. i notice around here one operation grows & harvests (think milo?), then uses an open trench or tunnel? to produce silage (tarp covered). in that case, i'd think the silage would be more nutritional than straight fescue grass, not sure. believe the nutritional value of fescue is quite low.

i certainly have never looked back or miss raising cattle, but find your commercial operation of interest, best regards

 

[Renze]

Seems like an epic level of field damage.

Yesterday my brother went to help a guy we know, about an hour drive with the car. He went there with tractor and caravan, i went with the car.

Its a bunch of hobbyists helping each other out, and theres no rush.

35mm of rain screwed us over, the field about 8km from the farm was crap, the corn was very low because it didnt stop raining right after planting. We had a month of good weather, and now its raining again so the ground turned mud again.

Even with live axles (PTO driven) we needed two tractors in front of half loads.

 

[LHF2019]

Is installing field tile a thing there to improve drainage? That is a lot of work to get a crop off. I have pictures of us using 2 tractors to pull the chopper with the lead tractor chained up on all 4 tires to get the corn off. Fun times. With the self propelled and using dump wagons, I have never seen 2 tractors needed to pull a dump wagon.

Always interesting what the same activity is called in different parts of the world. Here, heap is called a bunk or for a few a pit. I imagine covering is the same, plastic with tires? Maybe dirt or sand on the edge for a better seal?

I always thought the self loading wagons were interesting, they just don't catch on over here and still need everything else for chopping corn(chopper, trucks/wagons) and we are spaced out more so travel time would be counterintuitive.

 

[Renze]

Is installing field tile a thing there to improve drainage?

Its once every 6 or 7 years that its wet during harvest. Once in 25 years that it rains all summer and you get rubbish corn like this.

Tile drains are a thing on clay soil.

That is a lot of work to get a crop off.

The poorest part of the field, less than 2 feet high, the farmer just put the pipe in the "sieg heil" position and blew it over the field, it made no sense to haul a trailer a foot through the soil for such yield.

Always interesting what the same activity is called in different parts of the world. Here, heap is called a bunk or for a few a pit. I imagine covering is the same, plastic with tires? Maybe dirt or sand on the edge for a better seal?

Here they often call a heap a pit. Thats because in the 50s they dug a pit, put fresh grass in it and covered it with two feet of dirt.

I always thought the self loading wagons were interesting, they just don't catch on over here and still need everything else for chopping corn(chopper, trucks/wagons) and we are spaced out more so travel time would be counterintuitive.

You dont need an extra man on the chopper, and often a 3rd wagon to keep the chopper busy. My mate sometimes runs one wagon, often two. The pit man can meanwhile pick up some cows from the bedding area that havent seen the milking robot yet, or feed the calves when working with one wagon, but if you work in a field 7 or 8 miles from the farm, both the chopper man and the loader man are waiting on wagons.

Also a forage harvester needs more, and more expensive maintenance. The selfloading wagon only needs the blades sharpened every cut (about 60 hectare) and gets less damage from foreign objects because the cutting speed is much lower.

If you run a large operation with multiple wagons on the road, it makes no sense to equip 4 or 5 with a pickup and cutting rotor and drivers that can work with it. On a silage trailer or tipper, you can send anyone away, you just need experience on the chopper and on the heap.

 

[Renze]

I always thought the self loading wagons were interesting, they just don't catch on over here and still need everything else for chopping corn(chopper, trucks/wagons) and we are spaced out more so travel time would be counterintuitive.

Self loading wagons started in the 60s. Krone started in 1963 selling an add-on to their manure spreaders, they called it the load-all.

Back then, it was intended to pick up straw, hay, fresh grass to feed on the stable, fodder beet tops, all that they fed back then, when hay blowers were used to fill lofts of traditional farm buildings. Just replacing manual labour.

In the 70s dedicated loading wagons started to take over, and a few blades were introduced to ease the distribution of wilted silage on drive heaps. Silage was a lot drier back then, because the wagons just couldnt take it.

The Taarup 1030 was the first rotor cutter wagon, it was an absolute revolution in 1984, with its ability to cut 2 centimeter. Nobody cuts that short though, because it reduced the capacity of 100hp tractors too much. Still, you didnt have to hold back with 100hp in front of it, while older, fork style intakes could easily be bent with more than 60hp.

In 1986 or 87, Schuitemaker known from silage trailers, made a pickup and a cutting rotor on their heavy duty silage trailer, creating the first dual purpose wagon, for self loading silage as well as filling it with much heavier corn silage with a self propelled forage chopper

The drawback of the Schuitemaker Rapide was that its small rotor with straight spikes was power hungry and it squeezed fresh grass or wet silage to sauce. The advantage was that its pickup tine rotor was pulled behind the cutting rotor instead of pushed, so you had a lot of weight on the drawbar, great for grip on wet corn fields in autumn, better handling on the road with lighter tractors, and easier to reverse up the heap.

Later on during the 00s, everybody started to make heavy duty dual purpose wagons, that can take the heavier corn silage. During the 10s they achieved the weight distribution of Schuitemakers pulled pickupd with their pushed pickups by making a hydraulic fold-down headgate, to utilise the empty space above the intake

Thats the development of the selfloading wagon in Europe in birds view, for those who are interested.

I think in America the focus was sooner on chopping and tower silos, while Europe held on to loft storage of dry hay.