Our First Experience With Earlage

[Music] hi this is Jim from Panda family farms this was obviously a very tough year for anybody in the farming industry we were not able to get our cattle feed made when we wanted it so we had to seek out other sources meet our cows table hold of these guys that were in the neighborhood and they are shopping and harvesting the corn and we're turning it in to what's called helix where it's just a top portion of the stock the puss the corn itself in the cop back it out a pile and feed it to the cows throughout this summer upcoming dinner what'd you feed them before typically we had peed on alfalfa hay that we bailed wet called Baelish we gave up that field and we tried some other alternatives of sorghum today at grass I'm going to be perfect the bay lights but due to equipment failure not working out properly [Music] it's a house so how does this compare to what you did before might have seen feel that dragged down the road they're typically a round bale of hay that they powerful days multiple people you'd have to cut it with a mower that normally I could just go in the next day with my baler we would pick it up and fail it and then we had to take it back to a storage site and wrap it in plastic to cut out the oxygen so it could ferment properly now this is semi that you see will take unloaded at my place and they'll pack it tight with the tractor it will eventually cover with plastic to help cut off oxygen to so it ferments better less spoilage so how much time where you got invested in the old way versus the new way for the same amount of product these guys would be able to do entire years worth of feed for my entire herd start to finish in about three hours the old way that I would do it throughout the entire summer we would probably have anywhere from 40 to 50 hours involved and making feed for the cows that's a big difference we'll still have to bail some hay because they'll need a little bit more roughage than what this can provide that keeps their guts working properly what's the land impact how much land differences they're doing it this way is considerably less land as well before I had 30 acres tied up in two different pay ground in the various types I'm just guessing but I imagine these guys will only do about six to eight acres and will have about the same amount of tons of feet okay yet now this looks pretty similar to what people are done in the past called silage what's difference between ear lids and silage regular corn silage would be done in an earlier life stage of the plant and it'd be wetter the stalks that you see out there would be a little more green and it would be cut all the way down to the ground so you wouldn't see any of this extra residue out in the field it all would be incorporated into the chopped silage his ear llege popular because you just see silage all over the place and now you don't really see it dear lich hasn't been too popular around in this area but it has been making a steady comeback i don't personally know how well it'll work in our operation it's very new to me i just started researching it about three days ago so it's going to be a very big learning experience for us okay well it looks like this first truck is full i hope you can see in the video here so the truck is has left the is that called the forager a harvester what was what the the class machine be called forage harvester trapper it's still sitting there were where it was the trucks driving over the entrance we're going to head down to the other other farm where they're going to dump this and see what happens there you you [Music] here we are at Jim's farm they've they've dumped the first load of the ear lids [Music] what you see it what's different than most trailers see that the floor is moving in that again with a focus on the inside but there's there's these little chains that come out and they drag it out that's called a live floor [Music] you anyway you're ready this is the product that was made from the chopper that you saw going through the field earlier as we get it close up you can see there's a lot of corn material and it cobs then you got a lot of leaf and husk material predominantly it does appear to be pretty heavy on the corn which that's good for our corn yields I guess but now I will also have to include some sort of other forage for roughage for the cows if I give them too much of this with it being so heavy in the corn they could get too fat from it and the calves inside the pregnant cows could get too big as well and there would be complications come calving time so here in a few minutes our last load will be coming in and the tractor will be coming to push it up in a neater nicer pile and it will be running over it multiple times to pack it down nice and tight try to get as much oxygen out of it as possible to help preserve the life of it so here we are back at Jim's location and remember that gigantic pile of irreligion in the last video where you could barely you know you know it was it was way over our heads what he's doing now is he's compacting it getting that air out of there this is that same same pile just he's just been driving over it with the tractor just smashing it down this see this this file was that this is probably half after third the size of the pile that was here before and take a break be back with some more you if they now look at Jim Jim up there on the pile there's barely there's barely any deflection as you walk on it you can you you see them walking on that and it's just you know it goes on a little bit whereas before if it was at that fresh pile he'd have fallen right on through that's how much they smashed that down so this is going to be roughly eight acres worth of corn plants all smashed down into one one small area [Music] [Music] you you can see how much those most tires sank back here it was all all the fresh pile [Music] you you here we are so sort of the aftermath of the of the harvest you don't really notice a difference between where we're you know corn was combined in a typical fashion and where the ear Lidge was taken from looking down all these rows you see all of this all this other trash you know all this other material and as you can see you can't tell the difference between where corn was combined and where the image was taken if this was silage there would not be any of this trash it would be just just these stalks right here coming up out of the ground six inches or so numb that other stuff would be there I saw the difference between ear lids and silage thank you you

Channel: Hammett Family Farms

Views: 4,779

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: yTPiRlnC5jc

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2019