Filling Bunker Silos | Corn Silage Harvest 2021

how's it going everybody so today's a big day we are going to be harvesting corn silage we're going to be filling this first bunker silo corn silage is the main ingredient in our dairy cow feed mix you know if we can get it harvested and stored properly we're putting ourselves in a good position to be able to feed cows the next year right now my dad's finishing up the feeding for this morning just mixing a little batch for the heifers the goal for today is to make another bunker like this one you see we got it packed in here solid as a rock plastic covering it to seal it up we have a little bit of corn left in this third bunk those two are empty today we're going to start with a center one so we have a crew with the big forge harvester and wagons coming around 9 00 a.m it's 7 30 right now got a few people in the way they're going to help me lay plastic out we're going to drape it over the walls and then once we have the bunk full we can just fold them back over the top and it'll just kind of seal those corners up real nice i'm just going to get our sweeper attachment on the skid loader and clean up this mod a little bit at the end of the bunker [Music] all right my help is here roll this plastic out so just keep it as close to the wall as you can and roll it down through there's no wind this morning so this shouldn't be too bad we're gonna roll it on the outside of the walls and just pull it over we want the white to end up on top then so we're gonna go down on the ground like a foot put around the corner we'll drape it over the sidewalls first and then we'll do the back so this is all we have left from last year here guys think fast nice catch okay so my sisters were helping put the tarps on the walls they want to say bye we'll be back later they're also the ones that do the merge so link in description go ahead mike cody helping too so they're about to get started i'm following one of the carts right now we're gonna be starting in one of our rented fields it's the farthest from our farm it's about two miles [Music] [Applause] he's putting a liquid product in his chopper it's an inoculant this helps the forage to ferment properly keep it from spoiling two gallons will do 400 tons so it's just a very small amount this was the first deal we planted this spring right around the end of april it's just one field at this farm we rent it's about 11 acres start here so we got seven inches of rain last week a little worried it's gonna be a little muddy but we don't really have any choice [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] we're making corn silage we're not just going after the the ear with the grain on it taking the whole stalk so they're cutting it off eight inches off the ground and it's just chopping that whole stalk up so we got you got salt leaves grain corn cobs in there it's a good combination for feeding dairy cows oh i love that smell seven inches of rain within the last week and barely making any tracks i know it won't all be like that we got some lower spots in certain fields [Applause] there's the first load on its way home try and beat them back so i'm ready to uh spread the silage out we want to make sure those tarps aren't going to move all day just got back to the bunk this wall for some reason flipped out that way i guess the breeze kicked up a little not a big deal but i need somebody to help me pull it back over then these wagons unload out the front into the silo but they can switch them so that they unload out the back a lot quicker for bunkers [Music] it's the best smell [Music] feels about right to me we're shooting for about 67 68 moisture so two thirds of the way to this is just water yeah we'll have to run a test then but to me it feels about right the silence pusher rig just showed up it's got a mx260 with a blade on the front of it there's a second load coming in we're gonna use a skid loader to put some weight on this plastic we pretty much got all the plastic pinned down now so now we're ready for the the big case to come in with the blade on it he's going to build a little wedge in the back and he's going to make layers each little kind of push out make a six inch layer and then we'll pack it down you want to get it packed really good force all the oxygen out so that way it won't spoil got a big concrete weight on the back just add extra weight compact better [Applause] so it should take right around 100 loads to fill this one so the silage harvester has a set of rollers in it that it all runs through and supposed to crush the kernels we want to make sure that there's no hole kernels you want to make sure they're crushed up so the cows can digest the starch in them we got one half kernel a couple quarter kernels i'd say but yeah pretty good for years we've had a 7250 case with uh we put a big concrete block on and use that at the pack yeah we we sold that track for this summer so now we're going to just use this vibrating sheep's foot roller we did use one like this in the past felt like it did a good job so we just we're renting this machine so i'm going to take that up in the bunk then once he gets going a little bit and the pile is a little bit bigger i want to get the roller going on that bunk pretty soon but i'm going to go back and check the field out a little bit more see how the chapman's going so [Applause] we don't own any of the equipment running today we're running four carts for harvester it just makes sense for us to pay somebody come in with really nice equipment and do it this will fire up the sheep's foot roller get to packing so this thing's working pretty good i gotta go get some shorts on it's a little warm on there [Music] yes [Music] they just finished up with the first 11 acre field now they're moving over to the quarry farm it seemed like it yielded pretty good i'm not sure how many loads they got we like to use the sheep's footed roller instead of a flat roller kind of packs down to the second level stabs in and seems to do a really good job i like to get this back edge build up a little more and that way i can drive out pests and get my roller right to the edge of the wall can't do that right now if you piled this silage and it was all fluffed up and not packed it would start to compost and break down it's kind of a boring job but it's an important one i don't mind doing it [Music] see how much that sunk down [Music] say we're about a third full my dad's running the roller now i'm gonna go check out the chopper again it's a little bit of a drive this is the field i grabbed a couple samples from different times a little bit of a low area there it's a little muddy [Applause] [Music] so so so [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so we have over 70 loads in the bunk now there's a good amount of space there in the front so we're going to start filling that so our dairy nutritionist gave us this little unit to try it's a product called guardian it's made for dry hay bales but i think if we get that on the surface and then run over with that roller a little bit it'll help keep that mold from happening on top like it does sometimes it's kind of an experiment so it's just after 6 pm they want to keep working after they get this first one full so we gotta lay the plastic out so that they can just transfer over to the second one [Music] and run for it take it easy all right [Music] we got plastic laid out for that one on the left and the one in the back we're trying to spray this product on quick and dad's got it going gonna spray it on the surface and then roll it in a little bit chopper's going to have to stop a little bit we want to pull the plastic up on the sides and then we have to lay new plastic down for uh for that wall for the second bunker they're going to do there this is the last load going in we're just going to shape it up and start covering so we told them to quit on this one they're starting on the second one they're gonna have to stop soon though we're not quite ready for this side ready we got a bunch of help oh man we're going to pull that up here oh with your muscles we could do it with eaves yeah try it it's gonna be heavy we got the back wall pulled up first we're gonna roll out the plastic now for this wall right away so they can fill against it thankfully the wind stopped this evening so this is pretty easy we don't usually fill the bunks back to back like this it's just an added challenge we have the two sidewalls pulled over now you can see the advantage of this this plastic runs the whole way down to the floor and we can fold it over top and just seals that corner up really well now we're gonna run a cap piece through and it's gonna come up along the side keep the water out and we'll have a double layer of plastic kind of hard to see but we got the plastic all out and stretched and now we're putting tires on put a few sandbags around the edge to hold it in place and then we're going to cover everything with tires we want to force all that air out keep all the oxygen out so this stuff can ferment and make quality feed one tire at a time mike this really wasn't bad we got so many people okay it's about 11 30 we're gonna wrap it up for the night we did about half of that second bunker we're gonna pick it up in the morning so i'll probably make a new video tomorrow so thanks for watching guys

Channel: 10th Generation Dairyman

Views: 691,208

Keywords: farming

Id: gDT_PdweqnM

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021