Fall Harvest Under Way

[mlaug]

I thought I'd post a few pics from the farm and share a bit about what we're doing now. 8)
We make silage by chopping corn plants and storing them in silos. The plant material undergoes a fermentation process and the starches convert to sugars. Well made silage smells exactly like a sweet Va when it comes out of the silo. The process takes about a month or so.
This method of harvest will provide us cattle feed until next hay season.
Here is a picture of the operation in the field. The tractor is pulling the chopper, which cuts the plant and passes it through a rotating drum and cutting knives and then blows the material into the towed wagon.

In this picture, one can see the whole plants going into the chopper. Its a little different angle, but hopefully you can see what is happening.

Once the wagon is full, it is towed to the silos to be unloaded.

The hill behind is part of our pasture. We had a blessing of three inches of rain Sunday. I can't believe how quickly the grass greened up. I think one could have burned it off prior to the rain. We've been terribly dry this year. The worst drought since 1936. The pasture is aprox. 275 acres and there are 250 head of cattle running around out there somewhere....I haven't looked at them since Sunday, so I hope they are still there. :mrgreen:
Here we are at the silo. The wagon feeds into a blower that propels the material up the silo. This particular silo is 100 feet tall by 36 feet.

Another angle showing the feed table dumping into the blower.

We chop around 200-250 acres of corn. This will be enough feed to get through the winter and spring. It takes about two weeks, we're on day 10. We should have this part of harvest done by the weekend. :clap:

 

[mlaug]

Dang it. Somehow I got a double tap outta this post. :x
Would one of the the mods wave their magic wand and delete the other one, please.

 

[hobie1dog]

Thanks for the pics anyway.

 

[tbradsim1]

We cut rice from a combine and blow it in a wagon, reminded of my farming days on the land that I live on, now I lease/particape in cane farming, no more rice, you need a lot of water and deep water wells are very expense. The old cajun

 

[jah76]

Awesome pictures.
Those are some sweet tractors.

 

[philip]

Thanks for the tour. I enjoyed it. :clap:

 

[lonestar]

Thanks for sharing that, you have some nice equipment there. 275 acres + 250 cows, thats pretty good numbers. A buddy in central Texas runs 1 cow to 10 acres. Go far enough west and its 50 acres for 1 sheep.

 

[shawn]

Thanks very interesting.

 

[reichenbach]

Fall Harvest indeed! I just got home an hour ago from one of the Cooperator's farms. We did Brookefield Gala today. The men were done at 4:30pm, I finished at 8pm. Farming is not as much fun when you add science into it!

 

[bentmike]

Hey that's very cool thanks for sharing mlaug. We got lots of feed corn here in Ohio too but I'm a city boy so I thought the only thing saved was the corn kernel and not the whole plant. Learn something new every day.

 

[mick]

mlaug, what would be really cool is a thread that isn't just harvest related, but farm related in general and you could post pictures year-round of the goings on down on the farm. The boy in me wants to live vicariously through them. :lol:

 

[winterland]

thanks for the info and pics.

 

[pipesicle]

Mlaug, that land looks so rich it could be IOWA or heaven. :mrgreen:

 

[sjpipesmoker]

What do you use the silage for? I've only been on a farm once, It was a family farm in North Dakota, It was the FIRST and LAST time I tasted fresh cow milk..

 

[mlaug]

It is a feed ingredient for the cattle. Younger animals need rations with more roughage, such as hay, cornstalks, or this corn silage, to promote growth. As the animals mature they move to rations that are more protein intensive to promote fattening. The proportion of silage in the ration drops as the animals grow. We feed mostly heifers and their starter ration is almost entirely made of silage. Our usual starting weight is around 500 pounds and they will be on a mostly silage ration until they gave gained an additional 250 pounds then we will start introducing grain and grain by-products. By the time the animals are finished, they will be on a straight grain diet. There had been a previous reference to obese and unhealthy cattle in the organic thread posted last week. This is flatly untrue. Finishing animals on grain is an expensive undertaking. Corn is standing close to $8.00 a bushel and I can assure you no feeder that wishes to stay in business is spending more money on extra grain to make animals "obese". As soon as the animal hits market weight, it is gone. The price at market is not profitable now due to the high grain prices and high animal purchase prices last year. We try to buy as carefully as we can, but we are currently losing $20.00/head and it looks like that will continue until Novenmber or so when animals ready for market then were purchased at a lower price. We've got some high priced inventory to move through...which we had to feed high priced grain influenced by a drought market. That is one reason (among others) why beef is so expensive in your supermarket.
The corn does look pretty good, doesn't it? We haven't done a yield check in this field yet. Our biggest yield so far has been 90 bushels/acre. This was in a field that made 225 bushels/acre last year. Our lowest yield check came in at 47 bushels/acre. There has to be rain to make grain and we didn't get enough. Harvest is still early, we have another 2000 acres of corn to work through and an additional 500 acres of soybeans, but I'm not hopeful on yields this year.

 

[docrx]

Glad to see the fire of last year is well behind you!

 

[mlaug]

Yep.
I'll pass on any more fires. It wasn't all that much fun.

 

[lordnoble]

I'll pass on any more fires. It wasn't all that much fun.

This surprises me. I've always thought fires were lots of fun. I guess there is a difference between one you started for recreation and one that ruined your property, huh? JK! :rofl:
-Jason

 

[ravkesef]

The pictures are simply beautiful, showing one of the lovelier sides of farming--a very difficult, and as you point out, often unprofitable venture.

We have a farm in Ontario--130 acres, nothing on the scale that you have, but lovely nonetheless. And, as I tell my friends, I get up in the morning, and before long I know that I can be outstanding in my field.

 

[guitarguy86]

Awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing.