Preparing To Fill Silos...2016...

It's that time of year again.

Late August...school has started, the weather is s l o w l y turning cooler, and the silos are quickly getting empty.

Behind these closed doors is the silage room...

We store the feed carts in here and lock the doors so that the cows can't get in them and eat themselves sick!  Yes, they would do that!  (It happened one time, and the cow almost died.  After she recovered, she didn't have much of a desire for corn the rest of her lactation!)

Here also is access to the silos, which are almost completely empty, as you can see.  The unloader is resting on the last few inches of silage in the east silo...

This is looking up into the west silo...

This is the old tile silo at the other farm.  Several years ago, Jim put a plastic liner in the silo to make it airtight.  Each year we have to put another plastic liner over the doors.  That's the black strip that is hanging down from the top.  After the silo is full, Jim will cut the plastic off over each door from the top down, so he can open the door and toss the silage down the chute into the cart below...

This afternoon we walked through the corn field that he plans to chop, cutting samples of stalks throughout the field.  We ran them through the chopper and will have the silage moisture tested to see where we're at.  It's too green right now, we know for sure, but once we have the moisture sample back we'll have a better idea of when we might be able to fill the silos.  It can be a nerve wracking process, because we want a moisture level between 66% and 69%, and it also has to suit the custom chopper's schedule!

We bought one load of silage last week to hold us over until we can chop our own corn.  Every year is different, so we'll see how this one goes!

Short Season Corn Silage...

I know I've said this before, but it really does seem like yesterday that we filled silo, and here we are again.  We don't usually fill until the last week of August...right around the first day of school...but Jim planted some short season corn so that we wouldn't run out and have to buy silage this summer.

Last week we spent some time getting the silo at the other farm ready for filing...

The old tile silo isn't very airtight any more, so a few years ago Jim put a plastic liner in the silo.  It's fastened at the top, and falls all the way to the bottom.   The only part that gets cut away is in front of the doors, so that they can be opened (one at a time, from the top) to fork out the silage.  There's no unloader in this silo, so it's forked out by hand every day.  This is inside the silo, looking up.  That long vertical strip of brown is where the plastic has been cut away from the doors over the last year.  Jim has all the doors shut here, ready to put a door liner in place...

He climbed to the top of the silo with the new door liner, and I stood inside to tell him when he had it lined up straight.  I felt a little claustrophobic inside there...this was my only way out, through that last open door...

He fastened it at the top and let it unroll, covering the doors...

Now it's ready for filling.  When air gets into the silage, it spoils, so an airtight silo is essential for good feed for our cows.

Last Saturday morning, the guys came to chop.  Here he is unloading from the wagon into the blower at the bottom of the silo...

Jim spreads innocculant on top of each load before it goes in the silo...

Keep your hands back!!  I wish my camera had a setting that would show you the blur of that auger!

Even though they were finished putting silage into this silo, they left the blower hooked up.  Jim ran the tractor and blower the first few times he went up into the silo, to get fresh air to breath in case any silo gas had formed.

If the short season corn here at home tests dry enough, they'll likely fill the silos here at home over the weekend.

Transferring the Ag Bag....

Well...it's finished! 

Things went relatively well today with transferring the corn silage from the ag bag into the silo.

It took a little while to get set up this morning...there was some hard, crusty snow on the sides of the bag and around the bottom that needed to be cleared away before they could cut the bag and pull it back.

Once the end of the bag was opened, the first glimpse didn't look so great!  The slope end of the bag is never packed as tightly as the rest of the bag, and a tightly packed bag is crucial to preserving the feed! This is the end where the bagger was pulled away, the remaining silage shovelled in by hand, and the end buried to make an airtight seal.  Typically we don't have much trouble, but this year we lost a little silage at this end.  There were a few small holes which created problems!

The white that you see is ice on the silage around the edges, and that's normal.  But some of the silage itself was spoiled.  We were concerned...

 It's never a good sign to see the manure spreader out by the ag bag!  The spoiled silage went right back onto the field for fertilizer.  (and food for the crows, who are now welcome to help themselves!)  Thankfully, it was just one spreader load...

The rest of the plastic is pulled back...

and it looks great!  The cows and the farmers are happy...

The morning continued...Ken is a master with his loader tractor...

The silage is unloaded off the trucks and into the blower...

...and up into the silo.  Can you tell which silo it's going into?



Now Jim has two silos to level, and we have one silo unloader to lower and set up.  Sounds like that will keep us busy for another afternoon.  It wouldn't do to be bored!

 And...now that we're finished transferring the ag bag, the tractor operator is free to go to Florida!


*  Click here  to read other farm blogs, sponsored by Verde Farm!

Dairy Farming 101 - Part 2 Keeping the ladies happy...

There’s something you should know about cows. They are food driven animals!  Dogs want to be fussed over and cats want to be treated like royalty. But cows? Just feed them. A lot, and on time…



The specifics of the cows’ feeding program differs from farm to farm, so don’t get excited if this isn’t how your neighbor does it…but this info will be helpful for you to know when you come over to do the feeding next time we need a night off ! (thanks for offering!)


First off…I need to add one item to Dairy Farming 101 – Part 1…


Someone reminded me that I forgot to include Hummies – a PA Dutch term for young calves.  We usually called them this when I was a girl…how could I forget this one?!


Water – cows drink between 23-50 gallons of water each day


Hay – alfalfa is mowed and left to dry; then raked into windrows, baled into small manageable bales, and stored in the hay mow (usually in the upstairs of the barn). This process takes about 3 days from cutting to the mow.  Rain really throw a wrench into this process...that's one reason why you hear farmers talking so much about the weather, and why their ears are glued to the weather radios all summer long!


Balage – alfalfa is mowed and left to partially dry. It is then baled and wrapped in airtight plastic. We bale it into round bales…these are the marshmallows you see lined up along the edge of the field. After the balage has cured for a few weeks, it is fed to the cows. They love this stuff!


Haylage – the same as balage, except instead of baling and wrapping, it is chopped and blown into the silo.


Corn Silage – the entire corn stalk is chopped and stored in the silo. Excess silage is often stored in an ag bag – that white worm that you see sitting out in the field. In the winter, after our silos are emptier we transfer the silage in the ag bag to the silo


Cob Chop– dried ears of corn, ground to a fine texture by a hammer mill. Minerals and molasses are often added.


Toasted Corn – shelled corn, dried and toasted (smells a little bit like peanut butter when the bin is first filled)


Toasted Beans – soybeans, dried and toasted (they’re actually quite tasty!)


Pellets  or Top Dress– a nutritional supplement that looks like overgrown rabbit food! This is the only feed that we regularly buy for our cows. All the rest is grown on the farm.


Calf Starter and Calf Grower – special feed that we buy for feeding young calves; usually several different types of grain flavored with lots of molasses…it gets them used to eating solid food…kind of like giving kids candy!


Silo Unloader – the machine inside the silo that throws silage down the chute via augers and into the cart so that you don’t have to climb up and fork it down by hand!


*Now that you know a little bit about keeping them happy...and are likely bored to tears, let me know what you'd be interested in "learning' in Dairy Farming 101 - Part 3!

Silo Filling

 Today was a reminder to me that, even though summertime can be incredibly busy, fall is definitely our busiest time of year.

The weather feels like fall.  Finally.  After a brutal summer, with countless days of high humidity and temps well into the 90's, this week has been lovely!  Mid-afternoon today, when the silage trucks and the chopper rolled in, it began to sound like fall around here too. 

It can be a challenge to know the right time to fill silo. The moisture level in the corn needs to be "just so" when it's chopped for silage.  Too wet...you get a lot of juice.  Too dry...it doesn't pack properly and can mold.  Either way, it can cause feeding problems.  Today it was just a little on the wet side, but that's the lesser of the two evils!

 I hitched a ride with one of the drivers this afternoon, hoping to get a few pictures.  Then I hopped in the chopper for a couple of rounds.  It gives you a new perspective, and a new appreciation for "farm safety" when you're out there with all of that machinery!  Things went relatively smoothly; only a few minor glitches.  Our two 12' x 50' silos were filled in about four hours.

It's a good feeling to have this job well underway...we will refill in a few weeks, and put out a silage bag, which will be transferred to the silos during the winter, when the silos are getting empty and the ground is frozen.

Hopefully the cows feel the same way!