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Fall Harvest!

durallymax

durallymax

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We've been at chopping Corn silage for a couple weeks now. Got around 700 or so acres chopped and a couple hundred to go yet. Been doing a lot of custom hauling with the semis for other chopping crews, and once we get the silage chopped we will be switching the chopper over for snaplage. Then onto combining whatever corn is left, and lots of poop to haul then. Then break time. Been very busy, no sleep around here.


Here are some pictures.

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Finished pile at our farm, around 300 acres in it.

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Wow, Vinny .. that's a lot of work! When we drove through the midwest this summer, we were really amazed at how much corn was there. Alberta is mostly grains, canola, and hay or alfalfa and pastureland, so we don't know much about harvesting corn. Saskatchewan is wheat, as far as you can see.

Dumb question, but do you just chop it all up, or do you somehow combine off the ears and then chop up what's left? (I know how to pick them by hand, but I'm a little green on the machinery end)
 
for true corn silage it all gets chopped . All thats left is about a foot of stalk. We chop this in the 62-68% whole plant moisture range

For snaplage, we adapt a combine head onto the chopper and it snaps just the ear off just like when combining. But instead of shelling off the kernels it just chops the ear, husks, cob and grain. We do this in the 35-38% whole plant moisture range

Then we move onto high moisture shell corn which we run through a roller mill before storing. We do this a 24-33% kernel moisture.

Then whatever is left will be left to dry down some more then harvested to be hauled off and put in "grain banks"
 
That was hilarious!!!! You must've had a blast doing that.

In your first post, third pic, the distance that chopper is blowing the silage is astounding! I've never seen a chopper blow anything that far before.

Way back in the stone age my uncle did sweet corn with a two row harvester that he mounted on his International H tractor. Back in the 70s I drove truck behind a mint chopper. What you've got there makes what I was around look like I was in the Model T era.

Don
 
Been there done that ,there's was lot of corn grown in Ontario back in te eighties(prob still is),we blew both ear corn and silage in upright silos.


I hate to be the bugger having to lay the plasic and tires on your pits though
 
bison said:
Been there done that ,there's was lot of corn grown in Ontario back in te eighties(prob still is),we blew both ear corn and silage in upright silos.


I hate to be the bugger having to lay the plasic and tires on your pits though
Click to expand...

Yupp, still is. I agree on tarping the bunks.

Vinny, do you use a wheel loader to load the mixer??
 
handcannon said:
That was hilarious!!!! You must've had a blast doing that.

In your first post, third pic, the distance that chopper is blowing the silage is astounding! I've never seen a chopper blow anything that far before.

Way back in the stone age my uncle did sweet corn with a two row harvester that he mounted on his International H tractor. Back in the 70s I drove truck behind a mint chopper. What you've got there makes what I was around look like I was in the Model T era.

Don
Click to expand...

The feed is being pushed through the chopper first by the cutterhead, then through the processor and then by the accelerator all powered by 470hp which is little by todays standards. Its the 2nd smallest one. Claas biggest one has 860hp. I do not know what the new big single engine ones will have. Krones biggest one has over 1100hp and they make a 14 row head for it, ours is only and 8.

bison said:
Been there done that ,there's was lot of corn grown in Ontario back in te eighties(prob still is),we blew both ear corn and silage in upright silos.


I hate to be the bugger having to lay the plasic and tires on your pits though
Click to expand...

It was a crew of about 10 of us and took half a day. It sucks but nobody has come up with a better way yet.

Unfortuneatley we keep adding more and more plastic as the years go by so it takes more and more work. All of our bunkers we line the walls with plastic before filling them, then once filled we will put down the oxygen barrier plastic first (basically saran wrap) then flip the wall plastic onto the pile, and then lay the top sheet overlapping by 5'. We continue this pattern using 60' wide sections all the way down the pile. and overlapping them as we go to minimize losses. Its a mess and takes forever. We then cover tire to tire meaning very very tight , we dont leave an inch. The steep face in the rear is a pain. We first dump a lot of dirt at the base of the pile, we then stack a row of tractor tires along that, and then use up whatever tyractor and semi tires are left to create more rows. Then finish it off with whole car tires.

for the steep sides we have to tie twine string to all of the tires going down the side and then about 1/3 of the way across the top of the pile to keep them from sliding down.

WilliamBos said:
Yupp, still is. I agree on tarping the bunks.

Vinny, do you use a wheel loader to load the mixer??
Click to expand...

Yes we have a Volvo L60E for loading. We use a silage facer attachment for removing the feed needed from teh silage face.
WilliamBos said:
Hey Vinny,

Can I post this video on Facebook, for my friends to see??
Click to expand...

sure, doesnt matter to me.
 
I watched the little truck video and got a kick out of it. I showed it to my mother in law who just happened to be close at the time and she thought who was going to clean that up. She did not get it. I have to laugh at that too. No real concept of scale of things. Not that I understand farming on that scale either but do appreciate it much more. After a couple of loads the big trucks probably seem to feel little too. That is some neat equipment.
 
Vinny,
That's an impressive pile of Silage.

Near my families farm, there's a large dairy that cuts a couple thousand acres each year. Its impressive to watch those large machines mow through a field.

Be safe this harvest season.
I'll start my yearly pilgrimage to the farm in a couple weeks. Spending a relaxing couple weeks away from office and harvest some corn.
 
got done with snaplage a few weeks ago now trying to get the rest of the corn combined. Have about 150 acres of our own left then its on to hauling manure and working ground till we cant anymore, then time to be cooped up in the shop fixing, and plowing snow.

not very good quality or good skills, but i tried taking this video of us doing snaplage. But at 5-8mph it was tough.

http://s490.photobucket.com/albums/rr264/Dieselholicpullteam/?action=view&current=VIDEO0016.mp4


and heres a photo of the old girl when i got home with it from its last field for the year, finally parked. Got a lot of hours on it this year.

IMAG0344.jpg
 
Well weve been done with picking corn for a long time, and the past two weeks have been trying to make bedding and some baleage. Baled till 3:30AM when it rained on tuesday morning trying to get some corn fodder bales made.Our hay for baleage is still laying, and a few acres of windrowed corn stalks. It rained a lot, then it snowed 5 inches on wednesday and its still sitting on the ground here. Supposed to be gone this weekend. We will see how next week goes but winter might be early this year and we will have to do a lot of spring corn stalks and tillage.

Did get a good 70 loads out of the hog manure pit, the injector on the tanker is working great now that we have it dialed in.

Also bought a new Blizzard 8100PP from marty a couple days ago.
 
durallymax said:
Did get a good 70 loads out of the hog manure pit, the injector on the tanker is working great now that we have it dialed in.
Click to expand...
How many acres does that many loads inject?
durallymax said:
Also bought a new Blizzard 8100PP from marty a couple days ago.
Click to expand...
Mount it right away so it never snows...:agreed:
If you leave it in the shop or the shed it'll snow for sure.:D
 
Mike that was my plans, I'm installing it myself and figure the sooner I put it on the later it will snow. The 70 loads went on about 30 some acres I believe.

Snaplage is when you adapt a combine corn head to a forage harvester and chop just the ears. Also called earlage.
 
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