DO YOUR OWN SILAGE or PAY a CONTRACTOR?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ค. 2024
- This week we answer the most difficult of farming questions, should a farmer own their own silage equipment or pay a contractor!?
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Really appreciate your encouragement to do what we enjoy, totally different world but agree how much its doing the best job in what each years dice throughs our way
You're a breath of fresh air, intelligent, honest and brave to put it all out there. love how you explain things, keep it up, youre hugely respected and admired
Thank you! Will do!
We do our own silage too, defo agree that there is more work than you think maintaining/servicing/repairing all the kit!
The fact that my brother can fix just about anything himself if [when] it breaks helps a lot!
We're 50/50 maize & grass, we save money on the maize, probably on the grass too - but the main reason, as you said is being able to control the job ourselves.
We had a trip to Belgium about 8 or 9 years ago to buy a Claas 695 Mega forager with both grass and maize header - took a bit of organising payment and getting it shipped but has paid for itself about 10 times over with better silage!
I do enjoy all the prep work also tbh.
Always a great vid..wellmade and thought provoking.a wellrun ship there😊
Great video nice to see someone else's thoughts on doing there own silage vs a contractor being able to lift when you want is key 2 videos a week would be good
Great Video, I'm in the do it yourself school, it's about control, nothing is as stressful as waiting for the contractor, perhaps organising the gear and the drivers is a close second, thanks for sharing
I have no experience of waiting for a contractor! Never considered that!
If you have the gear and can hire driver it down to cost. Equipment is not cheap anymore. We did contracting for year but that started cost more with repairs in the end good man power was a another issue aswell.
@@FarmTheoryNI Nothing worse than knowing rain is coming and just hoping they'll be here in time...
Have you ever used Ventusky for your weather forecasting? I always use it and find it by far the most accurate
You're videos are amazing would love 2 a week such an intelligent person love them
Wow, thank you!
That Puma is looking sensational with the new tyres and paint job. Fair play
I know!! I'm so pleased. Well worth the bill. 😅
Brilliant I'm now watching and subscribed to another farmer :-) not even in the industry I seem to like real world content vs all the Netflix content etc.
Love your common sense weighing stuff up
Excellent video. Keep them coming if you can.!!
Yes I'd love if you had 2 per week .you explain in detail how to do things and why you do them the way you do
Great video shows the pure madness of organisation
For TH-cam videos - quality over quantity, I’d suggest you keep it flexible and add more content when you have it. Your videos are very thorough which I appreciated, but must take quite a bit of time
This is my thought also. One a week unless I have something I want to make a video with mid week.
two videos a week would be amazeballs.......your content is always very engaging!!!!!!!
"amazeballs" ? Is that even a word
@@concernedcitizen3163 🤣
@@keithaspin5160 ypu might need to grow up a bit
I appreciate the use of amazeballs. 😅 I will try and deliver!
Well, shoot, I reckon all I do is rake and tedder. Leave the mowin', silage cartin', and compactin' to them fancy contractors. Ain't no way I can keep up with their shiny new gizmos. They got them mowers with belts spittin' stuff out, them wagons drippin' liquid silage stuff, compact tractors rollin' around with heavy rollers, and big ol' spreaders for the silage. And would ya believe they even got them tractor tires adjustin' their dang air pressure for them wet fields? It's like watchin' magic happen, all in less time than it takes to blink. Dang genius, I tell ya.
I think it will be a Good idea to keep makeind Wednesday videos and we used to use a contractor for pit but we stopped doing pit an moved on to bales and we got a contractor to do it for around ten years and we had a wrapper and a mower so we decided to buy a McHale baler and new Holland Rake and still have them working well
Great video.
We used to get a contractor and it was 15 acres of silo twice a year and came to around £5000 a year. Then we eventually got a baler and wrapper at 10grand total and have increased profit dramatically. And now farm 21 acres which gives 500 bales.
Ok explain to me here how many tractors mower rake baler etc etc just to do yer own for wat like 2 day work in the year,,explain to me thanks
How did 30 acres cost 5 grand someone was taking the micky
@@stephenkelly2067 26 bales an acre @12.50 is 5000 for 400 bales
Across 2 cuts 13 bales an acre achievable enough
@@stephenkelly2067 he mowed and raked as well
If you can put 2 a week as we all look forward to see and hear your experiences aa alot happens on a farm in a week.i have learned lots from your down to earth expiations reasoning of difference situations .keep them trailers topped
Thank you!
That case is mint, tyres & all
if you missed that weather window how much milk would it have cost you ? I day = 0.1 mje in quality, timing is everything
we've just managed to persuade my Dad to get contractors in. Our pit is usually open for 10 days per cut, with the silage heating up and losing quality.
Woooooooow!! Contactors will be saving you money!
Excellent video again👍. We had planned to mow on Thursday but the contractor has taken on a new customer with bigger acreage than us and that customer wants theirs in this week so we have been put down the list and it will be two weeks now going by the weather. Getting a contractor has been a complete nightmare since we gave up doing our own silage during Covid and now this weekend we will be waving goodbye to the good weather for the time being.
Oh my days, that stresses me out!
Good stuff
C'mon Tyrone
you're on your Own
💪 💪
Good video if you have an interest in machinery and need to make good quality silage for dairy cows cutting your own is a great idea but for us with beef and sheep cutting our own with older machinery was a nightmare so now we just mow our own it definitely suit us better
Totally get that!
The more the better your video's are always interesting .the more video's you do the more you get paid
I will make more videos if I have something interesting to make one about. The minimum will be 1 a week. I think that's the best idea.
Our biggest problem labour
Two videos yes
I mite not agree wit everything ya say but theirs one thing your very honest
what size is ur silage pith shed ??
12.5m by 36m
Do you think if you lived and farmed in the south of Ireland and your cows were dried off in the winter you’d still do your own silage?
Yes, the Irish system needs to take silage more serious, especially with the new nitrates banding and limits.
@FarmTheoryNI this spring will wake people up surely that poor quality silage just won't work for cows in spring
Sorry good video just want to ask at 15:20 min in you tell us it cost a fortune to pay someone to mow but in the beginning of the video you say it’s roughly the same amount and it’s worth you doing it yourself, why is it now expensive to pay someone to mow ?
Ever wash the silo pit?
Nope, I know I maybe should but it's a lot of work.
Would it not be cheaper to get 2 forage wagons
Nope, distance to the field is the killer.
No maize or wholecrop then ?
Nope, I focus on making good silage.
Has to be a TH-cam video showing how to change a mower blade
Will you be able to show clips of you mowing your grass in fact the whole job??
Come back Saturday! 👌
Good man himself.best.luck silage some looking outfit thire good any contractor
How many acres would you put through the jf yearly
If i made hay the same day you make silage which is better feed
Silage. Hay is dried grass. A fair portion of the energy is lost in the drying process.
@@barrett2288 thank you sir
So to clarify my answer I'll clarify what I'm taking as your question.
If grass at the same stage of growth cut at the same time was divided into hay or silage which sample will be superior?
My answer would be it's possible to make the hay better than the silage. But not always.
In a very specific condition, its possible to make hay in 24 hours or even less.
That condition is a sunny day and that there is 1 ton of dry matter of grass to harvest per acre(luckily this coincides with the stage of best quality and bulk for feeding dairy cows).
The method is through maceration and mat making. Developed by the University of wisconsin. You macerate the grass like the way a mulching lawn mower would, to avoid losses you press the material into a thin(5-6mm) mat, and lay it on the stubble at a density equaling around 1ton/acre.
A crop of fresh grass at 1ton of DM/acre will have 5 tons or 5m3 of water to remove, an acre is a little over 4000m2 so you'll have 1.25 mm of water spread over the entire acre to evaporate off, this is made easier through the maceration which frees the water from the plant by creating way more open pores for it to evaporate from.
It will dry down to 20% moisture or 80%dm in several hours, 30%dm in 2-3 hours, and safe dry hay possibly in one day or by the next afternoon when the dew lifts.
The drawback is the same as the benefit, in bad conditions water easily gets into the material as easy as it got out.
A way to see it is to mulch your lawn with the lawn mower, gather up the material, put 120-140g of wet material in a baking tray 13x9inches, press it into a mat, and clear a patch of stubble on your lawn and lay the mat on the stubble to dry, best to do it in the morning say 9-10am.
@@billbobby461 would the protein levels be the same -what other metrics would you use to compare it with silage
@6thcence897 protein will be higher. Sugars will be higher. Its obviously less acidic so has less affect on the rumen. There are also more vitamins in hay compared to silage.
As far as I'm aware that is a Category 3 toplink eye and the Massey ferguson probably has a Category 2 bank linkage system.
Surely you have enough horsepower to run a set of butterflies, so much more efficient. Just dropped 100 acres in 7 hours using 3 litres of diesel/acre so she was working, merging and chopping tomorrow pm.
We cut, ted, and cart 2 trailers.
Contractors merge, chop, buckrake and run 3rd trailer.
I also cart for them occasionally which helps keep the bill sensible and most of there other customers are beef guys so we can get them whenever we want 👍
The capital cost of butterflies makes no sense. I'm mowing at 6.4m with then two mowers, like actually cutting that much.
@@FarmTheoryNI you should be in your bed by now if you're chopping silage tomorrow 😂😂
Would you advise a farmer to mow their own silage if they couldn't afford all the machinery, would the financial saving be worth it?
Yes!! Mowing charged per acre is a rip-off! Costs me under £5/ac.
Excellent video and I never comment.
Why thank you! I appreciate the effort!
Would you have a big need for a tractor if you didnt do your own silage?
Definitely not.
Sure the tyres were a bargain when you subtract the nice Michelin jacket....
Quite right.. buy a Michelin jacket and you get 8 free tyres😜
Tbf, it's a great jack.
Ploughed for years with a 3095 dynashift 4 fur kvernland refursible never any bother so that compacter would be wee buns lol 😅
It's rear linkage is rated at over 5t! 🤣
Biggest benefit of doing everything in house to me is you are not reliant on other people silage especially given our weather is the biggest benifit you can cut a field and grab it and that to me is worth a lot
I understand in 1 way wat ur sayin,but to buy the machinery the cost of repairs get Labour etc etc dose it add up🤷
@@liammurphy4937 difference of farms im a sheep and beef farm we do everything ourselves we make round bales so have all our own stuff our neighbours are a big dairy they run all there own kit self propelled forager but have a big family so plenty of staff
Count me in🦼
Nothing like the smell of fresh grass been cut miss it
I really do not know.
Pros and cons of of using a rake. We got one last season I definitely wasn’t impressed with the quality of the silage seemed like there was more dirt in it and had a offy bad smell
operator error
Set way too low by the sounds of it.
Did you have the slurry put out with a dribble bar? I reckon raking or teddering could be more of an issue with the lines of not fully broken down slurry than people realise
To get the grass dry quick enough you have to use a rake? Correct cutting height and rake settings and you won't have any issues.
😆😆
But it a night maer getting staf to help
I am very fortunate I have some good people
thats why i gave up doing my own silage ..........!
Get rid of that pile of crap massey 3115 an buy a case maxxam 5150 / MX
I love my 3115!
@@FarmTheoryNI
Enjoy your videos, luv the jf chopper and puma but still think that massey is crap
A great way to pinch your fingers, just reduce the tension
hello
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