Silos and Silage

[Bird]

I've seen pit silos and lots of round vertical silos, but when this thing was built in my neighborhood 3 years ago, it was the first one I'd seen of this size and type (although it may not be unusual to some of you). I've been intending to make some pictures ever since then and today they are hard at work filling it up, so I stopped to visit and learn more about it.

Concrete floor and walls on two sides, open on both ends (although everything is done from the end in the picture - there's an old gravel pit full of water at the other end).

301' x 251', only filled it to a depth of 40' last year, plan to go 45' this year and that will be 65,000 tons. It's pure corn, nothing else, stalks and all, of course, ground so that nothing is larger than about a quarter inch in size (the guy said every kernel of corn must be broken, cut, or crushed).

 

[Bird]

This silo is owned by a consortium of 6 dairies; the largest of which is milking 6,000 cows. They also own 3 more silos like this one, but this is the biggest one. And yes, that's 9000 series John Deeres spreading, smoothing, and packing the silage - 4 of them. I didn't ask why some have a blade on the front, some on the rear, and some on both ends.

 

[Bird]

The corn is being harvested by 6000 series John Deere forage harvesters; don't know how many since I only saw two, and I didn't want to get in the way, so I was a long ways off when I made this picture that doesn't even show the harvester. All you can is one of the trucks driving alongside it to receive the silage. And in the foreground is milo; the corn field was farther back from the road.

The guy told me that, this year at least, the farmers could make 10% to 15% more money per acre selling the corn green as silage than they could get selling shelled corn later in the year.

 

[gordon]

We have quite a few of the open silos like that around here. But nothing even close to that size. The big ones around here are half that size at best. Not time for silage around here yet too early.

Some great pictures Bird.

Gordon

 

[Will_C]

Bird,
Lots of bunker silos like that that here in upstate NY and NE Pa., but not nearly that size. Many farmers will actually excavate into a bank and then pour the concrete walls. Much less expensive on the larger dairies than conventional upright silos. Many farmers are also using ag-bags, large tube shaped plastic bags filled by a blower to a length of 150' or so.
Will

 

[Bird]

<font color=blue>Many farmers are also using ag-bags, large tube shaped plastic bags filled by a blower to a length of 150' or so</font color=blue>

I think I saw a few of those when I was up in that area about 9 years ago; wasn't sure just what kind of silage was in them. And a few years ago, in this area, I noticed quite a few of what appeared (in size and shape) to be the round bales of hay, except they were totalled enclosed in white plastic and I've been told that was silage, but I haven't seen any of them in the last 3 or 4 years.

 

[centex]

Could this be the work of Billy Sol Estes? I can't see a silo without being reminded of him.

 

[Bird]

I don't know, Don./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif I always associated him with anhydrous ammonia tanks instead of silos./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The things you saw that looked like round bales in plastic was just that. There is a machine that lifts the round bale up and spins it as the plastic just winds around it. As for the silage bags, a lot of farms have stopped using them and went to pits as the baggers take a lot of time for what little they can store inside of them. More feasible to have bunkers put in and just pack the silage in them. You do have some nice pics. Do you mind if I borrow them to have put on another website?

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I can't hear the word "silage" without thinking of my grandfather and his stories about how they'd hand fill the wagons with the stuff. And when they'd get down to the bottom they'd have cups and enjoy the fermented fruit of their labor.

As kid raised on a dairy in Arizona I do recall the sweet pungent smell that came when they were feeding silage to the cows.

 

[spencer200]

Well those are just a tad bigger than the ones on our dairy 40'x100' and 30'x100' I would think they would have to have move than two harvesters going to keep that many trucks busy and 4 tractors busy packing.

 

[Bird]

Yeah, Spencer, I'm sure they had more than two harvesters running, and I don't even know how many trucks. They had trucks coming and going from the south and they had them coming and going from the east, so I just followed one of the empty trucks east 5 or 6 miles, saw where he went, and could see two of the harvesters from there. I don't know how far the ones coming from the south were traveling; just know they went a few miles south down the highway, then turned east, but I didn't follow any of them.

I think the thing that fascinated me most was seeing those big articulated tractors up on top of that mound. I knew the silage was packed pretty tight, but for those tractors to not sink in at all . . . and that's a lot of weight.

And big numbers are, in many cases, mind boggling to an old country boy. My Dad's best friend when they were growing up worked nothing but Guernsey dairies all his life (except for a hitch in the SeaBees in WWII), and when I was a kid, I've helped them milk a hundred or so cows (by hand in those days - we only had one and sometimes two milk cows ourselves), but even with the machines they have now . . ., 6,000 cows to milk? One of these days I want to go see that, too.

 

[Bird]

Robert, I'm not sure whether we're talking about the same thing or not; may be. A number of folks in this area use the clear, perforated plastic wrap instead of twine on their hay balers (round bales) and that also leaves the ends open, but the ones I was talking about had the complete bale wrapped in opaque white plastic. What I was told, and believed at the time at least, was that you couldn't do that with hay or the condensation inside that plastic would ruin the hay, but not silage.

 

[Will_C]

Bird,
The neighbors just bought a new JD baler that is a silage special. They bale hay wet, and the plastic keeps it just like a mini silo, I'm told.

 

[njrqs]

That's a hell of a lot of corn there bird.

We have big coal loading facilities like that with dozers running around on the top, but have never seen crops or anything stored outside like that.

Huge !!!!!

 

[Ozarker]

OK, this city boy is going to bite. What the heck is silage.

 

[RobS]

Pretty amazing pictures Bird, thanks for sharing them. My boys (and I) have a couple of farm videos and one shows filling a bunker though not nearly as big. Same process and they run the big tractor over it to pack things down/squeeze out air. In the video the whole thing gets covered in black plastic and old tires to hold it in place /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Bird]

Ozarker, my old dictionary defines silage as "Fodder converted into succulent food for livestock through processes of anerobic acid fermentation (as in a silo)." It's plant matter with the right amount of moisture, ground up, packed and sealed to ferment. In this particular case, it's nothing but corn; however, other grains or greenery is sometimes also used.

 

[Bird]

<font color=blue>the whole thing gets covered in black plastic and old tires to hold it in place</font color=blue>

Sometimes I've seen black and sometimes white plastic; don't know that it makes any difference. On this particular one they used white last year. And they do have several tires on it, but I noticed last year that, from a distance, it would appear to have lots of tires all over it, but when I got closer, I noticed that the majority of it was not whole tires anyway. It was either some other kind of black rings all held together, or possibly tires split, and each one connected to the 4 on either side of it.

 

[spencer200]

for lack of better word fermented grass or corn that is feed to dairy or beef cattle, it is harvested at a higher moisture so that when it is stored it heats and turns into silage, if properly harvested and stored once heated and cured the product can easily be stored for a couple years.