Wanted: a new method of ensilage.

There was a local lad had the idea of blowing a load of grass over the sheet with his harvester. Just tipped a load and fed it in with a grab or fork.

Would have been fine except it turned to hay then whole lot including the sheet blew off one night!

Didn't some lads make a big bun then sheet it and just drive round and round it with a rotaspreader full of shite?
 
AYF said:
There was a local lad had the idea of blowing a load of grass over the sheet with his harvester. Just tipped a load and fed it in with a grab or fork.

Would have been fine except it turned to hay then whole lot including the sheet blew off one night!

Didn't some lads make a big bun then sheet it and just drive round and round it with a rotaspreader full of shite?
Click to expand...
Sheet a couple of farms by just throwing grass up on the sheet, 7 men on the pit 3 rolling the sheet down 4 throwing grass on it one can have 3 pits sheeted in under an hour
 
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AYF said:
There was a local lad had the idea of blowing a load of grass over the sheet with his harvester. Just tipped a load and fed it in with a grab or fork.

Would have been fine except it turned to hay then whole lot including the sheet blew off one night!

Didn't some lads make a big bun then sheet it and just drive round and round it with a rotaspreader full of shite?
Click to expand...
Muck works ok but is awkward to feed out
 
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slurryboy said:
Sheet a couple of farms by just throwing grass up on the sheet, 7 men on the pit 3 rolling the sheet down 4 throwing grass on it one can have 3 pits sheeted in under an hour
Click to expand...

We used to do that on an indoor pit. Put would be filled over the weekend for covering on monday evening. Dad would spend Sunday evening and Monday mowing the corners of fields with the pz165 that the 10ft mower didn't get and gather it up with the buckrake.

Pit would be covered Monday evening and the grass shook out over the top. Was hay in 1-2 weeks.

We fed this to calves over the winter. Was good enough stuff albeit very dusty as it never got air/wind dried.

Would still be at it only dads not fit anymore and won't drive a tractor unless he really has to- use tyres now.
 
Antares 130 said:
We used to do that on an indoor pit. Put would be filled over the weekend for covering on monday evening. Dad would spend Sunday evening and Monday mowing the corners of fields with the pz165 that the 10ft mower didn't get and gather it up with the buckrake.

Pit would be covered Monday evening and the grass shook out over the top. Was hay in 1-2 weeks.

We fed this to calves over the winter. Was good enough stuff albeit very dusty as it never got air/wind dried.

Would still be at it only dads not fit anymore and won't drive a tractor unless he really has to- use tyres now.
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We just use the grass in the pit just get handfuls and throw them up. Wouldn't work outside but inside well protected from the wind it works not perfect but works
 
Arthur said:
You're spot on about Frank Mockler, those were big pits back then, 100ft long, 40ft wide and 9ft walls, he reckoned the bit of waste was small when it was all combined with what wet pulp he used get from the beet factory and whatever else was in the diet feeder and coupled with the cost of the polythene and the work of keeping it stripped at feeding time it was easier to roll the life out of the finished pit and leave it so. I met him in the mart in Thurles recently, he said he would always say a prayer when buying or selling cattle, what prayer is that a man asked, the reply " when buying that I could buy cheap and when selling I could sell dear"
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Does he still wear the suit every time he goes outside the gate?

supposedly no man can go from filthy to spotless faster than him!
 
I have never seen hi
JohnBoy said:
Does he still wear the suit every time he goes outside the gate?

supposedly no man can go from filthy to spotless faster than him!
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I can't ever remember meeting him in dirty clothes, maybe not a suit but a shirt and tie, I think he is sort of retired now and one of the sons runs the show.
 
Arthur said:
I have never seen hi

I can't ever remember meeting him in dirty clothes, maybe not a suit but a shirt and tie, I think he is sort of retired now and one of the sons runs the show.
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It was in November 1988 that I was on a farm visit to Franks place , a Teagasc , or maybe it was still ACOT at the time. There were about 25 of us. He told us that he had 1400 cattle at the time. All continentals except 6 Herefords he bought off a farmer to get 20 CH. Job lot. Vast majority CH in the shed . I think there were 3 passages with 14 span long. There was a Deutz DX full time drawing Tops and Tails from the nearby Thurles sugar beet factory, which he told us he got for 3 POUNDS a ton , and that they were a huge help to the making of a profit from beef.
I wouldn't remember what I did last week , but that place sticks in my mind. The date I remember , because I had bought our 1sr silage grab the day before that.
 
nashmach said:
I wouldn't be too happy if someone posted a video of my pit on YouTube and called it hard work. Just saying.
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Well you wouldn't call it a walk in the park either. I remember that hardship going on here when I was young. Any wrong move and the cab of the tractor was stuck in the roof and the pit could never be rolled right until my father decided to take down the roof of the shed and build it back up six foot higher. Then when the pit was covered there would around 30 acres of hay in small square bales drew in and stacked up on the top of the pit. Misery.
 
jf 850 said:
It was in November 1988 that I was on a farm visit to Franks place , a Teagasc , or maybe it was still ACOT at the time. There were about 25 of us. He told us that he had 1400 cattle at the time. All continentals except 6 Herefords he bought off a farmer to get 20 CH. Job lot. Vast majority CH in the shed . I think there were 3 passages with 14 span long. There was a Deutz DX full time drawing Tops and Tails from the nearby Thurles sugar beet factory, which he told us he got for 3 POUNDS a ton , and that they were a huge help to the making of a profit from beef.
I wouldn't remember what I did last week , but that place sticks in my mind. The date I remember , because I had bought our 1sr silage grab the day before that.
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He had space for 2000 head, one winter he came close to loosing money he said, his margin was £13 / head, £26,000 sounds OK but for other smaller feeders it could have been £2,000 or less and but for the beet factory stuff could have been a bad year, there were times when the beet factory were begging him to take pulp and tops and tails as the yard was overflowing.
 
I can’t find the thread that @411abuser posted about grass drying.

Does anyone have a calculation for the energy needed to dry grass from 15% do to say 25%,I’m thinking would a drying floor work for silage.
 
My dad and grandad did barn dried hay in the late 70s,nobody would help because the bales were stupid heavy.

A day like today I could have gone out and got a few acres and it would be drying through the night.
 
scoffcruddle said:
My dad and grandad did barn dried hay in the late 70s,nobody would help because the bales were stupid heavy.

A day like today I could have gone out and got a few acres and it would be drying through the night.
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My ol man tried it too, was ok when diesel was dirt cheap
 
scoffcruddle said:
I can’t find the thread that @411abuser posted about grass drying.

Does anyone have a calculation for the energy needed to dry grass from 15% do to say 25%,I’m thinking would a drying floor work for silage.
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From 15 to 25% is an unreal amount of drying so much in fact you'd be as well off going the whole hog to make it to hay. An idea that has come to my attention is that of a greenhouse dryer. It'll never get rained on and it'll get whatever sun comes.
If you wish to dry with a barn dryer it's suggested to begin at at least 50% dry matter.
My suggestion would be to cut light and often, take the windows of dry weather when they come, if you cut at round 3-4 weeks (1ton DM to the acre)you'll get 30% dry matter without tedding after 24 hours.
 
Something to remember is how wet it gets over night, it'll nearly always be dryer before sunset than at 9 or 10 the next morning.
 
I think if you could stack large rectangle silage bales in a clamp and seal them like a silage clamp it could be a runner. You are getting a lot more density then a round bale or clamp which means less to handle and the shape is better to feed out at an easy feed.
 
Blue Power said:
I think if you could stack large rectangle silage bales in a clamp and seal them like a silage clamp it could be a runner. You are getting a lot more density then a round bale or clamp which means less to handle and the shape is better to feed out at an easy feed.
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I’ve done that and seen it done many times. Works well but you can’t go any higher than one row because it’s impossible to seal it properly.
 
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I’m just thinking outside the box and thinking of a way to get some grass in,rain every day here and ground was very wet for 2nd cut and it’s way worse now.:tdown:
 
scoffcruddle said:
I’m just thinking outside the box and thinking of a way to get some grass in,rain every day here and ground was very wet for 2nd cut and it’s way worse now.:tdown:
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Greenhouse dryer could be an option then. You say zero graze an acre or 2 at a time and put it out in the greenhouse floor, it'll stay dry from rain and will get whatever sun comes, it could lay for days if necessary.
 
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