This a video of the silage clamp being opened in early November. The silage is fed to our dairy cows all winter. Visit my RU-vid channel to see further videos of life on the farm through the year / thefunkyfarmer
Hi William. The 135 mostly does the yard scraping but we do use it a bit in the summer on a light trailer for fencing. Dad bought it 2nd hand 40 years ago, its a good little tractor, I gave it a lick of paint last year. Can't see us keeping the cows out much longer as we had quite a bit of rain this weekend
its just means you dont need a feeder wagon. not the best feed method but it works for us. there isn't much waste as the cows are controlled by the electric fence
i think we have a couple of days grass left for the cows then that's about it. Our 135 has done 8000hrs,spent a few quid on it last year to keep it uptogether but the engine has never been touched. You can't beat these little tractors for small jobs
when we had the dairy farm we fed the silage pit the same way, the only difference was we rolled back the cover so we could use it for the next year in stead of cutting it.
Same our fields are a complete bog but as long as there is grass they can keep going out, we have no young stock so once the milk cows are in that's it. Since leaving school earlier this year I have been wanting to start rearing youngstock so recently brought a few heifer calves to eventually bring into the milk herd. We have a 135 never put a foot wrong with over 5800 hours on the clock
You have got a nice MF 135. Do you use it only for yard scraping or does it have its other uses? Nice to see we aren't the only people in the uk with their milk cows still out at the moment!!!
If you want rid of the tires you could try using gravel bags to weigh your sheet down they don't collect the water as much and aren't full of wires .....
I have somthing like that box at the end it has a light on the front and holds a bike battery but is can be connected to some wires gor it from a farm sale :)
Silage... It just sounds wrong. Too much like sewage. Hay I understand, but I just can't seem to get my head around silage. "Make hay while the sun shines, and make silage if it doesn't", is a phrase I've heard. What I don't understand is what stops it just turning into a giant compost heap? Or going mouldy?
so you just feed your cows dry silage, you should feed them a mix of silage, maize, cake, and straw if you want them to produce more milk, my farm and yours are very different places then, not an insult I'm just saying.
Hi there,You really are a very good hard working farmer.I think you do an amazing job and I am sure we non-farmers who depend on yours and all the other hard working farmers hard year round good work for our food are totally thankful for the work you all do so well?I have the 2015 farming simulator game with two real English maps which I playing.After seeing your working on the farm and the machines it seems the people who have made this simulator has really done a top notch job at modelling the in game movements and workings of real life farming machines?Now onto the silage work! I see the huge amount of hard work you also need to do to keep the silage clamps repaired and usable, The fact that there is a by product from the maize that is a acid effect amazed me?I never thought that happened until watching your good videos on life of a hard working Uk farmer!So there is a wear and tear effect from the silage on the clamp walls?The black paint on the walls is a good idea, if you don't mind me a non-farmer saying this?I have two idea's that may help you with the clamp area?1 > the walls need protection from a acid from the break down of the maize silage,So maybe you could spay the walls with a resin like liquid which could help protect your clamp walls better from this acid you told us about?The right one could be better than the paint! plus it save you bending over or kneeing down so saving you time and saving your knee's and back after all your health and fitness come first?2 > Clamping the silage with a lot of old tyres must be a pain as you stated lot of water gets in them and there is worry about the old wires in them too?So I have a idea for a possible better way of keeping the clamps plastic sheet down?What about using a flexible non-rusting stainless steel wire mesh like a big wide bit a fence wire that you could screw by stainless steel screws and washers into the walls and the floor of the clamp and roll it over the sheeting to tightly hold it down then unscrew all but the top wall back end ones and roll the fence up to unclamp the silage?Bit like long roller blinds of wire in wide strips laid next to each other going down the sheet which could make holding down the plastic sheets less hard to do unlike old tyres idea?This wire being a non-rusting one would pay for it's self as you could leave it out under our lovely weather all year round year in year out, so long lasting and easy to roll up or down!Maybe you like these idea's or not? I just thought about the problems from a how to do it point of view as I do a fair bit of problem solving each day in my work place!Hope it helps?Cheers.
+Colin Campbell thanks Colin some interesting ideas there. Your also right about Farm Simulator being realsistic. Ive watched a few on youtube and was surprised how realistic it was. cheers
Any reason why there are no doors to that open barn? I would imagine that they would save a lot of hassle, especially re silage storage / feeding. Mind you, I'm speaking as a townie. LOL Enjoy watching these interesting vids.
+thefunkyfarmer ha! I've watched nearly all of them. I get that aspect re tractors, etc... where I was coming from was protecting the silage from inclement weather (particularly). Also, the cows: I notice they are prone to pushing-in to get at the feed, and, happy to let the by-product flow freely from the other end...so, are they polite eaters and considerate of other cows re the depositing of cowpats near the food end? Sounds a bit of a question, but am curious to know...spoilage, etc. Thanks.
+K2shadowfax i know what you mean but neither are really a problem. The sheet protects the silage and as the cows are facing the other way they don't really muck on the feed
