Ok I usually don't comment to often on You Tube vids but let me jump in here and give a tutorial on snaplage. The chopper snaps the cob off and then runs them through a standard chopper. However this chopper as well as ours is modified to deal with just the cobs (and a little bit of stalk and leaves as well). In our New Holland we have whats called a recutter screen. A steel plate with holes the size of silver dollars that smash up the kernals before exiting the chopper. Thus making the feed digestive friendly without any further need of a roller or hammer mill. The advantage to doing this vs. using a combine is that you get the whole cob. We have found that this product to be better suited for our animals vs. just plain old high moisture corn in that the additional fiber acts as a buffer and increases the corn digestability. Which in turn has improved heard health. (No more twisted stomachs). We've been doing this since the mid 1970,s When New Holland fist came out with their snapper heads and compatible choppers. However in watching the video and seeing the large leaves and additional roughage in their wagon I don't think they are using a recutter screen and may use additional processing before feeding it to their cattle. And yes a recutter screen and a "kernel processor" are pretty much the same thing.
You answered a question I had in my own comment. Thank you. In terms of compatibility, what does a chopper need to be able to do this other than the recutter screen, the ear-snapping head, and possibly a longer tongue?
Ok to explain this I will need to get more technical. In addition to what you listed there is a plate that bolts in between the upper and lower feed rollers along with different springs and a lift spacer (both sides) to prevent the rollers from rubbing on the plate. This plate prevents the cobs from getting jammed up in the rollers and dropping down on to the ground and helps to carry the cobs to the rollers that feed it into the knives. And the New Hollands did not need to extend the tongue.
Growing up on our dairy farm (NE WI), we would pick our corn, run it thru a grinder/blower into a 40' silo. We would mix that high moisture corn with the haylage to feed our cows. We saw a big improvement in milk production when we did that. We also added our barley/oats, mineral & supplements to that mix as well. What was nice is that we would shred the corn stocks into windrows and round bale them for fodder for the young stock & steers. What they didn't eat turned to bedding.
Wow learn something new every day! Thanks for posting that, Travis! Don't see that every day. I bet that WOULD make terrific cattle feed! I did something similar one time, we had some corn go down that we couldn't pick up with the corn head, so we "gleaned" the field and had it picked up by hand. I had some local folks interested in picking it up for their cattle, so we made a deal-- they pick up a load for me, then a load for themselves. They filled a pickup bed trailer a couple times with ear corn, and took a couple pickup loads for themselves. I hauled it to a local feed mill near Shiner and had them grind it as whole ear corn-- cob, shuck, and all, and bag it for me in burlap sacks. Fed cows that winter with it when it was particularly cold, and they really loved it. Thought it was kinda late for silage-- once the stalks and grain are that dry getting it to ferment properly is pretty much impossible I would think. BUT, picking the ears and chopping them up along with whatever husks/fodder get pulled in along with it that doesn't end up on the ground under the corn head would make excellent feed. I see they feed it to the blower really slowly too-- being that it's SO heavy compared to silage, I bet it's a strain getting it blown up into the tall silos... Later! OL J R :)
I love the terrain in your area...also :“This land pulses with life. It breathes in me; it breathes around me; it breathes in spite of me. When I walk on this land, I am walking on the heartbeat of the past and the future. And that’s only one of the reasons I am a farmer.” ― Brenda Sutton Rose
Had never heard of this before, but basically the same as when we were grinding ear corn for feed back 45+ years ago without all of the labor involved with that.
Great video ! I have never seen this sort of corn harvest done before ! I'd expect a recutter screen ( as mentioned elsewhere ) on the chopper but that unit doesn't appear to have one . I recall an old continental-driven Fox Chopper we had had that option but it was never used to the best of my memory. Probably because we only had a conventional corn head and a pickup table for small stem crops . Just another of many really nifty machines and parts my father let rust into uselessness. Keep up the good work and videos !
Awesome video and im sure it brings some good and bad memories chopping. I sure hope u guys chop again that would be awesome. I still watch the old videos they never get old but whatever u guys decided to do i will never stop watching!!! Thanks Travis and keep up the great work!!!
Great video Travis! I'm glad you took the time to learn and teach us. I'm always for learning something new and I do just that daily by watching your vids. I claim to be a country boy but most of my time has been limited to row crop farming. I've learned a lot about cattle from you guys. :)
We use to do a lot of ear picking for cattle feed. We then tried the corn cob mix setting on our 9510 shown in the manual. This worked slick because it was a lot faster to harvest and was already some what ground up for feeding. It must be dry though or it won’t come out of the tank.
When my oldest sister was getting married, that weekend drove my Mom nuts. My name is Tim, my soon to be brother-in-law's name is Tim, my best friend's name is Tim, my other good friend's name is Tim and my cousin's name is Tim. BTW, the best man's name was Timothy! So when Mom yelled out "Tim", she would get many responses.
Great video. You are so lucky to have harvestor silos on your property its a shame that you are not using them. If i had them on my place i would still be putting them to use, great quality feed minimal waste
Well, that was fun... yeah that's almost the same as high moisture corn but this has more ruffage content to it. It looks like amazing feed for beef and young stock. Thanks for sharing Travis!!!!
Nice video Travis, did a lot of this back in the day with the very same pieces of equipment!! Nice to see the process again after so long! Have a safe harvest! Regards, Ron
Interesting never saw corn cut this way. Looks like good feed. Going to have some work cleaning all the wrapped corn leaves on the wagon beaters. I seen on Big Tractor Power that John Deere has stopped mAking pull type choppers and is having Dion make them a Frontier chopper. Wondering if the new Frontier can do Snaplage?
Never seen it done like that. We used to setup the combine so cob would get in the grain tank then we used to have a blower that had a processor built into it. But that was probably 20 years ago.
As usual, a good video, But Made Better by some great creative camera angles. Also, it must be still raining, because you had time to make some smooth editing cuts and flows, And find cool music that works !!!
Thanks for this vid! I have heard of it, but do not not until now understand what it is involved. Is there any changes to the chopper other than the head to made for this operation? Greetings from Ontario, Canada!
Great video. Is the corn being chopped any different from the corn you are growing?.. It appears that the chopping is done on a greener ear... but I may be mistaken.
I knew this would be an interesting video when I saw it mentioned on IG. In terms of efficient operation, would it be simpler to harvest the corn with a combine and grind it with some kind of mill before sending up the tube into a silo? How much feed value is lost if the cob and husk go out the back of the harvesting equipment instead of into the wagon? How did they find that old combine head and figure out the way to connect it to the chopper? I'm guessing there was some inventive wrenching and Jimmy-rigging involved. Thank you for showing a different operation that your farm isn't set up to do at the moment.
No "wrenching" involved. It's a John Deere pull-type forage harvester. The machine is built as you see it. Lots of them for sale used and JD still makes new models.
Matthew Hoag I believe deere made an adapter to mount the combine heads on the chopper, if it wasnt deere, than there were aftermarket adapters made, as Ive seen them on more than one occasion.
To save the cobs with a combine the top sieve is replaced with a cob saver sieve and the bottom sieve is completely removed and not used. Then the corn and cob mix is run through some type of recutter at the silo.
It's basically down to "when" you take the plant and what type of heard you're feeding with it. With snapplage the plant is dead and somewhat dried out and snap like a twig (hence snapplage). Silage, on the other hand, you're taking it while the plant is still somewhat "alive" and still has plenty of moisture in it and you're basically shredding the "wet" stalk. Both still go through the same anaerobic process in the harvester silo, it's just a different moisture content for each type.
I had cows, andraised cows I also managed understand what you are saying, just never heard of snaplage. I also managed a grain elevator, so it makes sense to me much corn here is 16% or less here now
@@Rob_Moilanen , no, that is not what snaplage is. This process is snapping off the ears of corn from the stalk, similar to picking ear corn or the corn head on a combine,and chopping up that complete ear of corn with the cob and husks on it. There is little if any of the stalk that makes it into the forage harvester.
Does the chopper have a kernel processor on it?if not, do they do any further processing when it comes out of the silo before feeding it? Otherwise it would seem there would be a lot of unsplit kernels getting to the cattle.
Does that take the hole stalk .when filled siloes with the hole stalk. We lefr 2" stubs or is he just chopping corn.our corn was green when we filled siloes winter time use to warm our hands in it.just wondering tks
No... If you notice earlier in the video, you can see most of the stalks and fodder are still on the field. It's basically a corn head on a chopper. Picks the ears like a corn head (plus whatever leaves get stripped off and don't go through the snapping rolls on the head back onto the ground under the header) and feeds it into the chopper knives... so basically what's in the wagon is the chopped up grain, cobs, husks, and a few leaves. Silage is pretty much chopping the entire stalk, and yes it's done when the plant is much greener and wetter, so there's enough moisture in the silage for it to ferment properly, which generates heat from the bacterial/yeast metabolism in fermenting it, which is why it's warm. Later! OL J R :)
It's a silage wagon... silage is a lot less dense (more "fluffy" because of all the chopped up stalk and leaves and other green material) than ground up grain, so that's why they're not loading it "full" to the volume capacity of the box... Like he said in the video, they loaded one up almost all the way one time with the snaplage and it was SO heavy the tires were mashed flat to the rims... so they unloaded some off it in the field to lighten the load. Later! OL J R :)
snapledge is when they pick the whole ear of corn off the stalk and chop both the cob(the kernels grow around the cob) and kernels. on a combine you separate the kernels from the cob and leave the cobs in the field
You do for SILAGE... but silage needs to be cut when the plants are still wet enough (still green enough) to properly ferment in the silo. Once the corn gets down below a certain moisture and the stalks are dry, it won't ferment properly if cut for silage. Plus, cutting the whole plant means the corn grain is spread out through a LOT more plant material. Harvesting and chopping just the ears means that this feed is basically *concentrated* and mostly corn, with some ground up cob and husks and a few leaves in it for roughage or fodder. Being mostly corn, the feed value per pound or ton is MUCH higher and it's basically a fattening or finishing ration for beef feeder calves, which is their intended use for it. A combine doesn't gather the whole plant anyway-- it picks the corn off the stalks in the corn head, crushes the stalk and most of the leaves and spits them out under the head, then threshes the corn off the cob, separates it from the husks, cleans the chaff out of the grain, and deposits the clean grain into the tank while throwing everything else out the back onto the ground. A *chopper* can gather the whole plant (cut the stalk off a foot off the ground and feed it into the chopper knives, stalk, leaves, ears, cobs, husks, and all to chop silage) or, if equipped with a corn head like this, gather only the ears and a few stray leaves and feed them into the chopper knives like they're doing in this video. Make sense?? Later! OL J R :)
Ok I usually don't comment to often on You Tube vids but let me jump in here and give a tutorial on snaplage. The chopper snaps the cob off and then runs them through a standard chopper. However this chopper as well as ours is modified to deal with just the cobs (and a little bit of stalk and leaves as well). In our New Holland we have whats called a recutter screen. A steel plate with holes the size of silver dollars that smash up the kernals before exiting the chopper. Thus making the feed digestive friendly without any further need of a roller or hammer mill. The advantage to doing this vs. using a combine is that you get the whole cob. We have found that this product to be better suited for our animals vs. just plain old high moisture corn in that the additional fiber acts as a buffer and increases the corn digestability. Which in turn has improved heard health. (No more twisted stomachs). We've been doing this since the mid 1970,s When New Holland fist came out with their snapper heads and compatible choppers. However in watching the video and seeing the large leaves and additional roughage in their wagon I don't think they are using a recutter screen and may use additional processing before feeding it to their cattle. And yes a recutter screen and a "kernel processor" are pretty much the same thing.
Ok thanks i was wondering if their was a screen
Thank you for this
You answered a question I had in my own comment. Thank you. In terms of compatibility, what does a chopper need to be able to do this other than the recutter screen, the ear-snapping head, and possibly a longer tongue?
Ok to explain this I will need to get more technical. In addition to what you listed there is a plate that bolts in between the upper and lower feed rollers along with different springs and a lift spacer (both sides) to prevent the rollers from rubbing on the plate. This plate prevents the cobs from getting jammed up in the rollers and dropping down on to the ground and helps to carry the cobs to the rollers that feed it into the knives. And the New Hollands did not need to extend the tongue.
MrMarshallday Thank you.
Learn something new every day! Great video Travis 👍
Love the sound of the old girl.feels like home
Growing up on our dairy farm (NE WI), we would pick our corn, run it thru a grinder/blower into a 40' silo. We would mix that high moisture corn with the haylage to feed our cows. We saw a big improvement in milk production when we did that. We also added our barley/oats, mineral & supplements to that mix as well. What was nice is that we would shred the corn stocks into windrows and round bale them for fodder for the young stock & steers. What they didn't eat turned to bedding.
Well that is something new to me too. Thanks Travis.
I've heard bout snapplage but never saw it being made GREAT VIDEO😎👍👍👍
Wow learn something new every day! Thanks for posting that, Travis! Don't see that every day. I bet that WOULD make terrific cattle feed! I did something similar one time, we had some corn go down that we couldn't pick up with the corn head, so we "gleaned" the field and had it picked up by hand. I had some local folks interested in picking it up for their cattle, so we made a deal-- they pick up a load for me, then a load for themselves. They filled a pickup bed trailer a couple times with ear corn, and took a couple pickup loads for themselves. I hauled it to a local feed mill near Shiner and had them grind it as whole ear corn-- cob, shuck, and all, and bag it for me in burlap sacks. Fed cows that winter with it when it was particularly cold, and they really loved it.
Thought it was kinda late for silage-- once the stalks and grain are that dry getting it to ferment properly is pretty much impossible I would think. BUT, picking the ears and chopping them up along with whatever husks/fodder get pulled in along with it that doesn't end up on the ground under the corn head would make excellent feed. I see they feed it to the blower really slowly too-- being that it's SO heavy compared to silage, I bet it's a strain getting it blown up into the tall silos...
Later! OL J R :)
I love the terrain in your area...also :“This land pulses with life. It breathes in me; it breathes around me; it breathes in spite of me. When I walk on this land, I am walking on the heartbeat of the past and the future. And that’s only one of the reasons I am a farmer.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose
and now you know.....
The REST of the story.
Nice to see the(old stuff) working in the field.Looks like the 46 was running in B2.Wish I could still work that hard.Too many hours on me!
Had never heard of this before, but basically the same as when we were grinding ear corn for feed back 45+ years ago without all of the labor involved with that.
Great video ! I have never seen this sort of corn harvest done before ! I'd expect a recutter screen ( as mentioned elsewhere ) on the chopper but that unit doesn't appear to have one . I recall an old continental-driven Fox Chopper we had had that option but it was never used to the best of my memory. Probably because we only had a conventional corn head and a pickup table for small stem crops . Just another of many really nifty machines and parts my father let rust into uselessness. Keep up the good work and videos !
Never heard of snapplage before, didn't know anyone made such heads for a chopper. Interesting way to get grain.
This was definitely one of my favorite videos, I am not sure why but man I love chopping videos.
Awesome video and im sure it brings some good and bad memories chopping. I sure hope u guys chop again that would be awesome. I still watch the old videos they never get old but whatever u guys decided to do i will never stop watching!!! Thanks Travis and keep up the great work!!!
Great video Travis! I'm glad you took the time to learn and teach us. I'm always for learning something new and I do just that daily by watching your vids. I claim to be a country boy but most of my time has been limited to row crop farming. I've learned a lot about cattle from you guys. :)
Great video. Always nice with real life action, especially chopping corn. Thanks for your efforts making the videos.
Like when you show us different things on other farms
We use to do a lot of ear picking for cattle feed. We then tried the corn cob mix setting on our 9510 shown in the manual. This worked slick because it was a lot faster to harvest and was already some what ground up for feeding. It must be dry though or it won’t come out of the tank.
When my oldest sister was getting married, that weekend drove my Mom nuts. My name is Tim, my soon to be brother-in-law's name is Tim, my best friend's name is Tim, my other good friend's name is Tim and my cousin's name is Tim. BTW, the best man's name was Timothy! So when Mom yelled out "Tim", she would get many responses.
Great video.
You are so lucky to have harvestor silos on your property its a shame that you are not using them.
If i had them on my place i would still be putting them to use, great quality feed minimal waste
Well, that was fun... yeah that's almost the same as high moisture corn but this has more ruffage content to it. It looks like amazing feed for beef and young stock. Thanks for sharing Travis!!!!
great video travis thanks for showing
Nice video Travis, did a lot of this back in the day with the very same pieces of equipment!! Nice to see the process again after so long! Have a safe harvest! Regards, Ron
I could only imagine the dust cloud that comes from this snaplagge coming down the unloader.
Interesting never saw corn cut this way. Looks like good feed. Going to have some work cleaning all the wrapped corn leaves on the wagon beaters. I seen on Big Tractor Power that John Deere has stopped mAking pull type choppers and is having Dion make them a Frontier chopper. Wondering if the new Frontier can do Snaplage?
Great video Travis thanks for sharing have a great day
Hey Travis
Never heard of snapplage till the big guys were doing it with the big choppers. Never seen it done with a pull type. Pretty cool.
Never seen it done like that. We used to setup the combine so cob would get in the grain tank then we used to have a blower that had a processor built into it. But that was probably 20 years ago.
Great video!, nice set up with the ol Rex chopper wagon.
That's quality footage 👍👍❤❤
Have you heard the term earlage? Is that equivalent to snapplage?
Pretty cool video. Interesting to see the snaplage
I enjoy that video travis from australia
Yes I like chppping because I think it is fun to watch
Snaplage must ferment in the silo like regular silage. Wonder if that starts breaking down the corn kernals?
Very nice
As usual, a good video, But Made Better by some great creative camera angles. Also, it must be still raining, because you had time to make some smooth editing cuts and flows, And find cool music that works !!!
Thanks for this vid! I have heard of it, but do not not until now understand what it is involved. Is there any changes to the chopper other than the head to made for this operation? Greetings from Ontario, Canada!
Thx for the video ;-)
When you do silage do they use all the fertilizer like you would for normal harvesting?
Anyone around you do ear corn picking?
Love just how the land rools and is that 4630 a quad or power shift?
This is a quad. I believe
Love this
Great video. Is the corn being chopped any different from the corn you are growing?.. It appears that the chopping is done on a greener ear... but I may be mistaken.
nope, it's the same stuff
I knew this would be an interesting video when I saw it mentioned on IG. In terms of efficient operation, would it be simpler to harvest the corn with a combine and grind it with some kind of mill before sending up the tube into a silo? How much feed value is lost if the cob and husk go out the back of the harvesting equipment instead of into the wagon? How did they find that old combine head and figure out the way to connect it to the chopper? I'm guessing there was some inventive wrenching and Jimmy-rigging involved. Thank you for showing a different operation that your farm isn't set up to do at the moment.
No "wrenching" involved. It's a John Deere pull-type forage harvester. The machine is built as you see it. Lots of them for sale used and JD still makes new models.
I was referring specifically to the attachment of the ear-snapping head to the chopper. I'm well aware the choppers are available all over the place.
@@MatthewHoag77 my boss puts a combine head on his claas chopper for snaplage
Matthew Hoag I believe deere made an adapter to mount the combine heads on the chopper, if it wasnt deere, than there were aftermarket adapters made, as Ive seen them on more than one occasion.
Do you know what model head is on the chopper?
looks like an economical operation. does it translate to higher profits?
4630 did it have 8 speed forward or synchronized transmission nice tractor
8 speed synchro , quad range, or powershift
Hey Travis, do you chop your stalks after harvest?
Was that header an option for that chopper or is it just a modified combine head?
it's a purchasable item
I asked my Dad if he had heard of this he said that farmers in Indiana “change the concaves” ? and just use a combine... what does that mean ?
If you set the concaves closer together they will grind up the kernals and cobs as they go through it rather than separate them.
Oh ok thanks :)
To save the cobs with a combine the top sieve is replaced with a cob saver sieve and the bottom sieve is completely removed and not used. Then the corn and cob mix is run through some type of recutter at the silo.
Awesome
How did the corn on his moldboard plowed ground yeild?
Flooded
Been around of this but never heard of snapplage , how is it different?
It's basically down to "when" you take the plant and what type of heard you're feeding with it. With snapplage the plant is dead and somewhat dried out and snap like a twig (hence snapplage). Silage, on the other hand, you're taking it while the plant is still somewhat "alive" and still has plenty of moisture in it and you're basically shredding the "wet" stalk. Both still go through the same anaerobic process in the harvester silo, it's just a different moisture content for each type.
I had cows, andraised cows I also managed understand what you are saying, just never heard of snaplage. I also managed a grain elevator, so it makes sense to me
much corn here is 16% or less here now
@@Rob_Moilanen , no, that is not what snaplage is. This process is snapping off the ears of corn from the stalk, similar to picking ear corn or the corn head on a combine,and chopping up that complete ear of corn with the cob and husks on it. There is little if any of the stalk that makes it into the forage harvester.
What do they do with the remaining stubble?
We mulch it with a brush hog
What transmission is in the 4630? Power shift or quad range?
Tim Denowh quad range
Does the chopper have a kernel processor on it?if not, do they do any further processing when it comes out of the silo before feeding it? Otherwise it would seem there would be a lot of unsplit kernels getting to the cattle.
Are the silos at 5:36 leaning or is that an illusion?
Illusion
Great video. I was kind of expecting you to climb the silo and show how it is going into it. Maybe next time.
Most people call it earlage.
Im not going to lie I'm jelous
Does that take the hole stalk .when filled siloes with the hole stalk. We lefr 2" stubs or is he just chopping corn.our corn was green when we filled siloes winter time use to warm our hands in it.just wondering tks
No... If you notice earlier in the video, you can see most of the stalks and fodder are still on the field. It's basically a corn head on a chopper. Picks the ears like a corn head (plus whatever leaves get stripped off and don't go through the snapping rolls on the head back onto the ground under the header) and feeds it into the chopper knives... so basically what's in the wagon is the chopped up grain, cobs, husks, and a few leaves.
Silage is pretty much chopping the entire stalk, and yes it's done when the plant is much greener and wetter, so there's enough moisture in the silage for it to ferment properly, which generates heat from the bacterial/yeast metabolism in fermenting it, which is why it's warm.
Later! OL J R :)
the trailer looks like it was made for something else
It's a silage wagon... silage is a lot less dense (more "fluffy" because of all the chopped up stalk and leaves and other green material) than ground up grain, so that's why they're not loading it "full" to the volume capacity of the box... Like he said in the video, they loaded one up almost all the way one time with the snaplage and it was SO heavy the tires were mashed flat to the rims... so they unloaded some off it in the field to lighten the load.
Later! OL J R :)
The latest from TH-cam
What is snap ledge?
he explained it, but you can go here to learn about it. fyi.uwex.edu/forage/corn-snaplage-harvest-and-feeding-2/
snapledge is when they pick the whole ear of corn off the stalk and chop both the cob(the kernels grow around the cob) and kernels. on a combine you separate the kernels from the cob and leave the cobs in the field
Another name for it is earlage
Re watch the video he explains it at around the 5:00 min mark.
So not much diff then picking ear corn and running throw grinder mixer
Why not combine the whole plant?
You do for SILAGE... but silage needs to be cut when the plants are still wet enough (still green enough) to properly ferment in the silo. Once the corn gets down below a certain moisture and the stalks are dry, it won't ferment properly if cut for silage.
Plus, cutting the whole plant means the corn grain is spread out through a LOT more plant material. Harvesting and chopping just the ears means that this feed is basically *concentrated* and mostly corn, with some ground up cob and husks and a few leaves in it for roughage or fodder. Being mostly corn, the feed value per pound or ton is MUCH higher and it's basically a fattening or finishing ration for beef feeder calves, which is their intended use for it.
A combine doesn't gather the whole plant anyway-- it picks the corn off the stalks in the corn head, crushes the stalk and most of the leaves and spits them out under the head, then threshes the corn off the cob, separates it from the husks, cleans the chaff out of the grain, and deposits the clean grain into the tank while throwing everything else out the back onto the ground. A *chopper* can gather the whole plant (cut the stalk off a foot off the ground and feed it into the chopper knives, stalk, leaves, ears, cobs, husks, and all to chop silage) or, if equipped with a corn head like this, gather only the ears and a few stray leaves and feed them into the chopper knives like they're doing in this video.
Make sense?? Later! OL J R :)
B
Please slow your into down to what it was,or don't do it at all. It sounds rediculus
Or drop the intro entirely... "Hi, welcome to the rest of the story..." is enough :)
Later! OL J R :)