Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Corn Silage.

Done at last. only 11 acres, and a short two days, work, but getting to it with the rain was the kicker.

That looks pretty good, Richard!

I see it's still muddy there too...

Nothing beats corn silage for cattle feed. You don't see much of it here stored like that, although sometimes they will blow it into the big bags instead of filling a silo.

The pictures are not great, mostly I was pushing silage. We have been finishing the pack with a dualed tractor since 1988, we gat less rot on the top that way.

We store ours in ag bags.

Just finished today.

Nice Rainbow too, Ben!

Good to see more "ripe" power equipment!

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Wabigoon
Am I seeing that right? Is it just spread out on the ground? How do you feed it to the cows, scoop it up or just let the cows at it? Do they gain weight off it? I know it's a lot of questions, I have never raised cows so just trying to learn. I hope to have cows before long.
Thanks in advance.

Ben how do you get the silage into the bags? Some of our neighbors have bags like up by their milking barns and I wondered what they might be.
Thanks in advance.

It's called an ag bagger.

The feed goes into the hopper, pushes it into the bag. The backstop and cables regulate the pressure to get the correct "pack" in the bag. As the machine pushes ahead the bag comes off the machine and fills. It's basically like a big sausage stuffer. A 9ft diameter machine does 1.25 ton per foot.

Farmer use the bags for shelled corn in the fall as well. .

That is a pit silo, dirt sides, concrete floor, the silage gets loaded with a loader, and mixed with a Oswalt auger mixing wagon, then fed in concrete fence line bunks.

Wabigoon
Am I seeing that right? Is it just spread out on the ground? How do you feed it to the cows, scoop it up or just let the cows at it? Do they gain weight off it? I know it's a lot of questions, I have never raised cows so just trying to learn. I hope to have cows before long.
Thanks in advance.[/quote]

I’m not the OP but raised on a Kansas beef farm where we used cane silage for cattle feed. My brother runs the farm these days and had his 40 acres cut yesterday.
To your questions-

I believe that this silage is stored in a trench cut into a hill side, that’s what we did. The trench could be 12-15 feet deep and 20-50’ wide. Some silos are made of tilt up concrete walls, and there is the common upright silo and the newer option of long large plastic bags.

When feeding it, you scoop it from the silo into a feed wagon or truck that has augers in it. Then you drive next to a long set of feed bunks, and turn on the augers and drive parallel and next to the bunks. The silage is augered into the feed bunks. There may be other methods of distribution, but you don’t just turn the cattle loose in the silage.

Yes the cattle gain weight off it. Often there are grains and supplements added to the silage in the feed truck, to get the right balance of nutrients for the best weight gain.

Thanks Dale
I surely wouldn't have guessed that.

Thanks Ben

When I was a kid, taking it out of the silo was all hand work. Fork it into a trailer, drive it to the feed bunk and fork it into the bunk. Might be why I have back and shoulder trouble today

Climb up into the silo, use pick-ax to loosen, shovel down the tube, climb down, spread out the length of the bunk, getting jostled by swinging heads, and on one memorable day get a (thankfully, blunt) horn swung into the back of your thigh.

Fellow of exceeding girth in our area went out to shovel down silage without mentioning his plans. Didn't appear for supper, which was due cause for alarm. Turned up later after family had been frantically searching. Since he had climbed up there, he decided to make a day of it and shovel down plenty to pile up at the bottom for the next few days' feed. Inadvertently shoveled down enough to completely block his route of egress. Spent considerable time loading up his pockets and the tied-shut legs of his overalls, climbing back up, emptying out, and repeating the process until he had managed to open a path of departure.

Loading the feed wagon.