henarar, i do both round bale and pit silage, and unwrapping bales in winter is the worst job in the world. i cover the pit with straw bales, so no tyres to handle, you just lift off the bales, load the silage into the feeder wagon, and never leave the cab.

a sheet to cover my clamp is about £100 same as 12 wrapped bales.

the reason we went to pit silage from bales was a bad outbreak of listeriosis in sheep, which you dont get in clamp silage as the ph is lower.

we stopped hay due to toxiplasmosis outbreak.(and sh** weather)

as to a clamp, mine is an earth floor, but nowadays i suppose you should have concrete with a collection tank, which might avoid some sleepless nights.

a thousand ton clamp will cost you 130 cub of concrete, or about £10,000 if you lay it yourself. you can dig out the earth and pile it up for walls with a telehandler.

a contractor will clamp it for about £5/ton

so allow £1,000 annually for the pit, plus £5,000 to fill it, comes to £6/t

baling wrapping etc is nearer £7/bale or £11 or £12/t

for small tonnages, bales are ok, but over 500 bales becomes expensive.

glasshouse:

a contractor will clamp it for about £5/ton

Three of my customers have stoped haveing a contractor to fill there pit and now have me to bale and wrap it all.they say its cheaper and better

glasshouse:

a contractor will clamp it for about £5/ton

We don't wish to use contractors for silage, regardless of which method we are using.  Options on the table are combi baler, or clamp and forage wagon in order to be self sufficient, but since we currently don't have a clamp, it is bales for the time being, and a new combi baler (0% finance being offered) would not be a wasted investment should a clamp be built sooner than expected, cos it will just be traded in for a wagon, may get a cheap secondhand baler again for odd little bits, but it won't have to be a frontline machine like it does now.

As for constructing clamps, realistically don't expect change from £50k for what we require, concrete floor, panel walls, and secure covers (remember, we get customers visiting frequently, so the place does have to look like a show farm)

Contractors cost for baling/wrapping may be £7, but it doesn't cost that to do it yourself, bearing in mind kit will be required if we were clamping it, and new farmer owned stuff doesn't seem to be depreciating much when trading in at the moment.  So yes there is capital tied up, but we have to feed the cows somehow.  The contractors round here are just not reliable enough.

Farmer Dan 6465:

We don't wish to use contractors for silage, regardless of which method we are using.  Options on the table are combi baler, or clamp and forage wagon in order to be self sufficient, but since we currently don't have a clamp, it is bales for the time being, and a new combi baler (0% finance being offered) would not be a wasted investment should a clamp be built sooner than expected, cos it will just be traded in for a wagon, may get a cheap secondhand baler again for odd little bits, but it won't have to be a frontline machine like it does now.

If you insist on making your own silage then I think the combi baler is the way to go as it a more flexible system and requires less drivers. It would be expensive to run two lots of kit i.e silage wagon / forager and baler ? As you say Dan, bales are handy for odd bits, so being you'd have a baler anyway you may as well bale the whole lot.

Farmer Dan 6465:

As for constructing clamps, realistically don't expect change from £50k for what we require, concrete floor, panel walls, and secure covers (remember, we get customers visiting frequently, so the place does have to look like a show farm)

Point taken, but you could do it for a fraction of the price and the silage quality would be at least as good, probably better in an earth bank clamp. 

Farmer Dan 6465:

The contractors round here are just not reliable enough.

We are very fortunate here. We have a couple of very reliable contractors in the area so we chose not to buy any silage kit ourselves. This gives us the flexibility to clamp, round bale or square bale or any combination of the three. Usually though we'll clamp the bulkier first cut and then decide about the second cut according to the quantity. Anything over 7 bales an acre is best clamped, but a lot also depends on ground conditions at the time. If it's really wet the contractor sometimes bales with a normal round baler and wraps separately, to avoid causing too much damage on our steep land with the fusion or worse still the square baler.

sorry farmer dan, my calculator doesnt have key for "show farm" or "visitors" !

glasshouse:

sorry farmer dan, my calculator doesnt have key for "show farm" or "visitors" !

You nee one of those scientific ones, after you have a cost use the squared button.

With clamp silage dont forget the diesel. We have alot say to us bales are expensive but they forget the 2500lts of diesel that the pit boys use. As for the baler go for a fusion output is better than anything else it is also about the only true combi unit on the market the others are just a wrapper bolted on a baler. The other thing with the fusion is it has less over hang so getting in your steep gateway shouldn't lead to the wrapper scraping the floor. 

Farmer Dan 6465:

wondering whether it might be able to do 150 acres of first cut grass in a long day (reckon 7 or 8 bales/acre) think there is any chance??

So Dan how did you get on??

henarar:

So Dan how did you get on??

The baler went well, but we didn't have 150 acres left to do by the time the weather came good, and due to it coming really good all the hay was to be cut aswell, the biggest limit in output we had this year was that I couldn't mow the grass fast enough to get the 125 acres all down at once before the late cut rubbish was going to be too dry for silage.  Also, we don't have enough tractors/drivers so on day 1 I cut 60 acres (50 for silage and 10 for hay),  but then on day 2 the hay needed turning, and the silage was drying so fast that it desperately needed baling, so I turned the hay first, and started round baling at 11, did 450 and was in by 8pm so pleased with that.  Was all downhill from there, day 3 went out mowing, neighbour comes out "you know you said you would do a few little bales of hay for me, well it's fit to bale" so only got 45 acres cut that day after faffing about raking up and baling 160 little bales of hay for neighbour, and turning ours, day 4 turned our hay in the morning and went off out with the baler, had an air-con fault in the tractor, so went to dealers to get that mended, got back did some more baling -looked at the hay at 2pm and it was ready, so put the rake on, rowed up and then went out baling with the little baler at 4, did 900, finished at 6.30, and back on the round baler, ground was horrible and steep so going was a little slower, and when it got dark I went home as I didn't want bales through the hedge or in the stream.  went back out day 5 finished the 15 acres of silage left, picked up the 900 bales of hay (with a bit of help - still only 2 people though) and mowed the last 20 acres - early night.  Day 6, going well, only 3 acres left to do, net getting low and going to run out, frantic phonecalls ensue as nobody seems to have any, we get a roll in the end, and with 2 bales left run out of wrap, again nobody seems to have any, but thankfully local dealer (who sold us the baler) has a part roll that has a crumpled core that came off a wrapper that came in for sale which he gave us, enough to get us through.

So, in conclusion, I reckon it may be possible to do 110 acres a day in a reasonable crop with the baler, as long as you don't spend ages cutting lodged crap with a 3m mower conditioner, the ground is a bit nicer than ours, and crops are not quite as big as we have had.  Pleased really, now off out bale hauling, 1450 to get in (at least dad bought me a new trailer this year).

 Dan, you have proven that with a bit of luck and long hours that one man and one tractor can do a hell of a lot of work. We are constantly being told this by the boffins who sit at their desks telling the rest of us that we are over mechanised.

I still think though that there's no harm in having a spare tractor (and driver) handy when your back's against the wall, especially in summers like this one where the weather is doing it's utmost to spite you, and as we all know, things only break down when you're depending on them

By the time you finish carting all those bales it'll be too late to apply slurry before the next cut ?

welshnwilling:

I still think though that there's no harm in having a spare tractor (and driver)

We do have a Massey 3125 as a sort of spare, trouble is we don't have 1000 speed PTO, so it won't run the mower, and the electrics aren't up to the baler.

When we were trying out a baler without wrapper the other wrapper had to be used separately, dad said he would go out wrapping after milking, hitched the wrapper up, changed the electical plug and went off out, ten minutes later I got a phonecall "Dan, how do you get this wrapper to work, it just did half a turn and then stopped"  As someone who used the wrapper a lot I knew the spool lever on the tractor had popped out and shut off the oil flow, but as dad hasn't used it for years he had forgotten, and as such turned the wrapper control box off and on again, then the wrapper thought it was at the start of a cycle, but with the table in the wrong place, so I told him to put on manual and wrap using switches.  An hour later I got a voicemail message "Dan, the tractor has died, it's late and I'm going to bed, have wrapped one bale."  So, the following morning I go out to wrap bales, at the start I have a wrapper hitched to a dead tractor, with the electrical connectors changed, I would have been better off if we didn't have a spare.  Different story if it worked though.

And that's the other problem with spare tractors, the price of them.  We have just done a deal on a new tractor, and the 6465 is going rather than the 3125.  120hp, 5 years old, 4500 hours, mid spec, mint condition but tyres down, £31k.  We couldn't keep that as a spare for 75 hours a year.

welshnwilling:

By the time you finish carting all those bales it'll be too late to apply slurry before the next cut ?

The only + side to not having more than 3 days slurry storage, is that we don't have any to put out, and the huge yields mean we aren't using any aftercut fert this year, and most of the ground will be grazed, not much more silage to do at all this year, 25 acres haylage ready next week, 40 acres silage late september, and anything too far ahead of the cows.