Silo Repairs

Harvesting our corn had been going well until I kept stopping up the pipe that the silage is blown through to the top of the silo. The kernals of corn are hard and wear down the metal, which is what happened to the top elbow and distributor on this silo. It was no longer smooth and so the silage would catch and start backing up.

We hired some silo guys to come and replace it. 

Elbow on the left and distributor on the right

You can see him working seventy feet in the air on a small ladder taking the old one off and putting the new one on. The distributor is worked by the handle shown in the photo. Flipping it up and down between loads makes sure the silage is blown in evenly in the silo. If you put it all on one side you stand a very good chance of causing your silo to lean and fall. 

70' Upright Silo -> Don't look down!

The new parts solved our problem and the corn silage I've blown up the pipe has kept on going. No stops and no problems.

Wordless Wed: Silo and the Sunrise

2012 Starts With a Bang

I hope we're getting all of the bad of 2012 over with on the first day.  It sure would be nice, but I don't have high expectations.  It started on New Year's Eve when a shaft broke on the silo unloader's blower.  This morning a cow fell down and the grain auger that goes in the barn had problems.

The good news was the cow, who fell while fighting another cow, got up all on her own. We're keeping her separated from the other cows for a while to make she didn't hurt herself. The grain auger only had one bolt that broke and we fixed that in about 15 minutes.  The silo unloader will have to wait until tomorrow and we do have some spare parts ready.

Maybe the worst isn't over yet for 2012, but maybe the problems we have won't be hard to solve.

Silo Daydreaming...

After a few hiccups getting started (sudden wagon wheel spindle breaking in particular) we've gotten a bit of corn chopped.  My job is driving the silage wagons to and from the fields and unloading them at the silo.  Part of that time I spend looking up.

As crazy as it sounds, as a child I daydreamed about living in a silo.  Totally impractical, I know.  I thought it would be neat to have all those rooms going up, but I never could decide on an elevator or a spiral staircase.

My kids might enjoy the idea of living in a silo just so they could really really pretend they were playing Rapunzel.  But I don't think my better half would ever go for that.  Besides, the cows are pretty fond of how we use the silos now so I suppose we'll just leave it at that.

Harvesting

After practically running out of hay and silage over the winter things are finally starting to look up around here on the farm.  It really got cold early last year and we had to start feeding more of both to the cows to keep them healthy.  The colder the weather the more they needed to eat and boy did they eat a lot.

Last week we finished chopping all of our spring crop.  We had wheat and rye mixed in a few fields and ryegrass and marshall ryegrass in a few others.  We try to raise a few different types so that in spite of weather stresses on one type the other might grow well.

This is a video of the silo unloader, which is raised to the top of the silo during filling, is being lowered down on a cable to the silage.  One of the worst parts about getting silos ready to feed off of is making sure the silage is level all the way across, in this case that is twenty feet.  This time we got lucky and there was very little forking to do in the silo to level it up.

We've also got our first field of hay mowed and hauled in.  What a great feeling to know that we have hay and silage ready for our cows to eat to make tasty fresh milk.

Filling the Silos

Harvesting our wheat, rye, and ryegrass for silage has been sometimes slow going for us this year.  Intermittent rain keeps us starting and stopping.  When it rains too much the silage is too wet to put up and the fields are too muddy.  When the weather is cooperative a lot can be accomplished.

Silo Unloader Raised to the Top

The first thing we have to do to get started is raise the silo unloader up to the top of the silo.  This is the machine that throws out the silage when we are ready to feed. 

During this time we'll also be out in the fields mowing our crop down and letting it cure out some before we start chopping and filling up the wagons.

The wagons are then unloaded one at a time and blown into the silo.

Finally we will let the silo unloader back down again and turn it on to feed those hungry cows!