Corn Silage Harvest 2020 | Filling 1st Bunker Silo - Complete Process

hey everyone eric here so today we're going to be filling this bunker silo we are almost ready to go we just got to get the plastic over the walls we got the harvest crew showing up in about an hour so i have my buddy mike helping and my two sisters we're gonna get this plastic rolled out pulled up over the walls guys you can get that kubota and back it right to the end of the end of the wall here and you can stand on it so we're rolling the plastic out on the outside of the wall and then we're just gonna pull it up over and down the other side and leave the rest sitting on the ground here until we're done this bunk has eight foot walls and it's 42 feet wide 130 feet long so we should be able to fit about 1200 tons in here so black or white uh black is going to be facing up gonna go down onto the floor actually this year go a little farther like uh two feet out onto the floor so we're hanging plastic on the walls before we fill so that once the bunk's full it'll be full up to here we can just fold this plastic up over and it'll just seal up that corner really nice and you also have just on the walls or some cracks on them like the the seams between the walls like this you can get some air coming through there so this will help just keep all the oxygen out we want to keep the feed quality as good as we can okay so mike pulling it now let's get it let's pull it tight [Music] so this is all the salads we have left from last year's crop very close to the end it's good we're harvesting we actually did make an ag bag last week so we're starting to feed out of that as well it's just right out there we got the sides done now we should have put one on the back and we're ready to go so in the past we brought this plastic down just to the kind of the bottom of the wall this year we actually bring it onto the floor and that way it's so that if water ends up coming down the outside of the plastic it can drain out the end without getting into the feed we were told that works so we're going to try that is it the good kind you didn't bring me one well i wasn't sure if you had one already i would get one for nelson it's the perfect beverage for hard work we worked for like 15 minutes so we got the plastic on the side walls and then once we're done we're going to put this big piece on top so this is a silo stop oxygen barrier plastic it's a higher quality and we're going to be putting that on less all right we're good to go that'll blend mike the harvest crew should be here in 10 minutes or less the plan is for the first load just to come down along the side and get them to run it right out along here and it'll hold the plastic down nice we pay a crew to come in and do our harvesting so they have a chopper and then they're gonna have three or four wagons today pulling it in and then we they also brought a case with a blade on it to push up so we're gonna also have our tractor packing then but we're not gonna be pushing the feet up with ours [Music] [Music] so this machine is chopping it off eight inches off the ground taking the entire stalk and just grinding it up so we're getting the stalk the leaves and the ear that kernel is a corner in there some tall corn here it's good looking stuff so they're chopping now the first load's on its way [Music] in [Music] [Music] we were hoping to get him to run out that front part along the sidewall but it would take him about 10 minutes to switch the machine over to turn towards the front just going to use the skid loader to put the speed on the sidewall plastic [Music] [Music] right so what we want to check now is the how well the corn is processed he's got the grain going through the chopper chopping everything up and then running it through a big roller inside of the machine and destroying the kernel so we don't want to see any whole kernels he can adjust the harvester make it roll it better if we're not happy with it [Applause] [Music] i'm gonna go grab some breakfast and then i'm gonna come out and we'll put our tractor on so i got the weight on this tractor already i'm gonna run a second rig just packing so the reason we want to make sure the kernels are crushed is because there's energy in those kernels but the cows if they're whole and not crushed up they'll just pass right through the cow without them absorbing much out of them so try to crush them that way the cows can get all the energy they can out of them [Applause] so i'm running the packer tractor now so now that we've got some loads in this is the 20th load coming in he's kind of built a wedge and we're he's spreading out about six inch layers and then we're packing them real good we're still getting it done i'm fueling up the tractor i wanted to have this full when i started but i kind of forgot about it the more weight the better so you know 50 gallons of fuel that adds up to a good amount of weight so we might as well keep it full so the more way we can get on that bunk the better lately i've been eating more food drinking more soda whatever i can do to help the farm it's just important for profitability so i sacrifice every day try and drink at least a couple sodas [Music] now they're cutting in the field right across from the home farm you can see they split down the middle there the corn on the left if you can't tell is a little bit greener that was planted may 27th and the corn on the right that they're cutting was planted may 5th so for those of you who aren't familiar with what corn silage is used for this is the main ingredient in our dairy cow feed ration and it feeds really well it's a high yielding crop and the variety we're planting here is a bmr so it's designed to be higher digestibility than a conventional corn basically the stalk of this plant would be a little bit more digestible there's more of the soft fiber in it and the cows can get more nutrients out of it generally we expect a little lower yields with this type of corn but we make up for it with higher milk production from the cows this corn was planted no-till so we had a cover crop in over the winter we had sprayed whole manure on it and then just came in with the planter 30 inch rows at about 31 000 seats per acre so [Music] you [Music] [Music] so so my dad put a sample on the moisture tester and came out of 66 and a half percent moisture that's right where we want it we're shooting for right around 65 to 68 we're starting to learn with more experience kind of when the feed's ready to cut and it's getting a little bit easier for me to kind of recognize it so this is encouraging to know we got this one right so i got dad with me here to supply some extra weight they're doing a good job yeah everybody i guess you can't be running the tractor yeah i can't shift very good with my right arm i don't think it would go so else i was just packing away my uncle nelson pointed to the front and said there's an oil leak up there so that's not a good thing yeah yeah that's i see it moving so where does that go it's fixable but we it might be a bit of a project to get the hose out and replace it and it's labor day today so i'm not sure if we can even get another hose we're gonna rent this messy ferguson to run on the weight for today we actually had to use the same tractor last year we had another issue with our 7250. it's funny because that 7250 is pretty reliable in general but it seems like we're gonna fill the bunkers it has issues which doesn't really make sense because it's a pretty easy job just driving back and forth slowly all right we're gonna hook up to this weight [Music] all right we're back to packing no i don't think it will be it's pretty cool too so you guys gotta get an honest load there [Music] at this point they're right around 65 or 67 loads in the bunk starting to fill up there's a good amount of space there in the front so we're just working out the slow job of packing it in as the loads come in the goal is to get a wedge built which he has there and then as the load comes in he just spreads it out four to six inch thickness and then we can pack it down and we want to make sure we have enough weight on there and we like to have two tractors so we can cover the surface well and it seems to work really well with two tractors on this bunk so we need to compress the oxygen out of the feed if you just pile it it would just spoil and mold on us the tractor we're using there has a 5 000 pound weight on it and it looks like the weight's bigger on the other tractor i'm not sure how much that one weighs as the loads come in they always back in and dump right in front of the tractor that's just doing the packing once the load is empty i'll switch over to the other side and then the guy with the push blade will come in and push it up and so we'll just flip back and forth each load one of the keys to getting it packed right is just having the right ratio of weight on the pile to how fast the fee is coming in i'm not sure what size this chopper is compared to other ones i don't think he has the biggest one but it does move pretty quick he's got an 8 row head on it some of our fields are smaller so it kind of slows him down [Music] do [Music] we have a couple guys packing right now so i'm gonna be able to mix feed they'll soon be done and we can cover it shouldn't be too late tonight that'll be nice so i'm finishing up with the feeding now still feeding a little bit of silage out of this last bunk not much left at all i got half the salads out of that last bunk there and the other half we're gonna get out of this ag bag we had made 10 days ago now so we're mixing it a little bit this is what it'll look like that green feed will ferment turn into this the feeding is finished and they're actually getting closer to being done now we're kind of cleaning up the corners getting the edges ready pretty much done pushing up on top now they're just going to push some of the front we got about eight loads coming to get [Music] we got the last load coming in right now we don't like to make the bunks crazy full because we want to be able to pack the boy to the edge [Music] we're just doing our final packing turned out it was 85 loads so it was a little less than i was maybe hoping for but it's pretty much full we're happy with it still solid yields but yeah we're just packing over everything one more time and then we're gonna cover it [Music] they pushed a little bit of salvage off the back wall we're pulling that plastic up first they're gonna fold that in and then we're gonna clean this mess up a little bit [Music] all right we're about ready to get started so we got lots of help right you gonna help okay we're about ready to pull the plastic up over look at this guy white t-shirt hi ethan all right so we had the drone up uh we made a mistake it wasn't recording but uh we pulled the two side pieces of plastic over just covered it and they pulled to the center just barely overlapped in the center um so you can see it right there we taped them a little bit in the center just to hold them together so they don't slide down so you can see what this did on the sidewall just sealed this up really nice that's why we like to set that plastic out beforehand so we get that corner sealed up really good and now we're going to go ahead and put the top cover on so we have one big piece and it's the silo stop oxygen barrier plastic so it's a better quality plastic now we're opening up the top cover we're going to roll it out over the bunk and this is going to spread out over the whole surface so we will have two layers of plastic over everything so we're gonna go ahead and put some sandbags on and then lay tires over everything bunker stylers do take some more work than say an upright silo would but it is kind of fun to work together and have a bunch of people help out throwing tires and pulling the plastic out i kind of look forward to that job to be honest now i'm in the skid loader because we didn't have anyone else to run it so i'd just sit there and be lazy but they're just laying the sandbags out along the side this will just hold the plastic down good at the edges and just make sure we have them sealed up the tires we're using here are just normal car tires that are cut in half we had rented a machine that caught them a long time ago when we built these bunks and we don't really like these as much because they're smaller now we like to get the truck sidewall tires they're a little bit bigger and lighter i'm just getting scoops out of the pile and bringing them over letting them do all the work we like to cover every inch with the tires not leave any gaps just to make sure we're holding that plastic down not letting any air get underneath it so everyone we have help and i should mention them all we have my brother ethan in the white shirt my two sisters chelsea cassidy my wife emily my buddy mike and then two of our other employees tanner and ethan which you might have seen them before and we are going to get some help from caleb as well [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right we're done [Music] now [Music] so now today we're just going along we just went along with the skill loader and cut the extra plastic off the side i'm going to go across the back and then we'll go ahead and put dirt across the front edge just to seal that up put about uh just over 1100 tons in this bunk it's gonna make good feet i believe if you like the video make sure you hit the like button and yeah i really appreciate you watching we'll see you

Channel: 10th Generation Dairyman

Views: 1,347,202

Rating: 4.9148674 out of 5

Keywords: farming, harvest, corn silage, dairy

Id: JGQi54zUXQM

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020