corn silage question

Just kicking around an idea. I have a a growing beef herd and I'm kicking around the idea of corn silage. I have the land but not the chopping equipment. My questions are as follows.
1) How many acres does it take to fill a bag
2) How much I feed per day to prevent spoilage
3) What does it cost to have someone come in and chop and bag.

I'm in southern Wisconsin.
I know it depends on yield but give me some input please.
I have experience feeding corn silage but it was at a large dairy so spoilage was not an issue.
Just trying to plan for next year.

Thanks

Joe

Can be a lot of diffrent answers to this question. 1 could take 12 to 25 acres depending on yield, I have filled a bag with 14. Bag size is also a concideration. 2 Spoliage is directly related to air temp. So less spoiled feed in cold whether,and thus less can be feed per day. 3 The cost of chopping can depend on how much you have to provied. Do you supplie tractors anddrivers to pull wagons? or is the custom guy bringing everything. The distance from the field to the bagger can be a factor too, if they have a 5mile trip from field to bag and 5 miles back to field agian , get ready to pay extra. The all included price in my area is around 400 to 500 bucks per hour. And the lowest price per hour can sometimes be the highest per acre. Hope this helps, you almost have to try it once to know for your own farm.

Most folks in my area use cement bunker (??) silos or trench silos. Neighbor uses about half trench then mounds it, covers with plastic/dirt and is happy. Does all himself (him and wife). Has a 2 or 3 row pull behind chopper with a wagon behind it. chops, hauls, dumps, and the wife packs it with another tractor. When done they cover it and let it work 2 weeks then start feeding. Do the same with grass some years.

Dave

I wouldn't want to mess with a bag cuz I don't see how you handle it without a lot of hand labor. But maybe with a small bunch you are hand feeding anyway. What are we talking, 20-30 head? That should keep the face fresh. My consideration is what is hay worth in your area and compare that to what it will cost you to get the silage in the bag. Then remember silage is going to run 70% moisture and you don't want to pay for water. The last I put up I had around $25 a ton in total and I thought that could work. Today I'd probably go around $30

Don't want to Bust your b ubble ,,.cuzins Dairy uses the bags and have had a problem with wild turkys pokin holes in the bag to get corn ,,causing spoilage

If you have the land available why don't you just plant it in hay and bale it. Round bales are easy to make and easy to feed. The down side to the corn silage idea is the cost of equipment/custom work plus desposing of the bag. Sounds like you are set up for hay already.

Rick

Racoons like it too.

Never used bags or a bunk myself so I'm just relating info from friends and neighbors. There are 8,9 and I think 10 ft diameter baggers with 100,150 and 200 ft length bags. Figure 1 ton per ft of length on a 8 ft dia. bag, going rate to rent the machine is around $1000 per bag, chopping and tractor use would be on top of that. Feed quality is excellent. Friend claims when he bought silage from a well managed bunk his dairy cows dropped on milk compared to the bag. Some extra labor involved opening and closing the end at feeding time and cutting back the plastic. Usually a skidsteer is used for unloading. Location is important, can turn into a muddy mess. Critters tearing open the bag can be a problem and in one case a snowmoble with a studded track running running down the length of the bag. Just a few things to think about.

My buddy and i feed silage from a bunker . The neighbor gets a bag every year for the last fifteen years. We both told him way back that a bunker would be more cost affective and pay for it's self in a few years over the bag. We do around forty to forty five acres each year. When we first started doing this i got him a New Holland 717 chopper with both heads for 650 bucks and bought two Gehl silage wagons for 875 . As for power we had two 706 Gassers a S/MTA and a John Deere A Chopped with one 706 and packed and leveled with the other with a three point 8 foot blade . Did this for a couple years till he bought a 1066 off of me and we up graded to a New Holland 782 that he found that was just a hiccup and a sneeze from being junk, i totally rebuilt that chopper and we are still using it today. When we went two row we added a third wagon then a forth did away with the three point blade and found a nine and a half foot heavy duty Myers snow plow and mounted it on his brothers 1950 Oliver . This sure beat looking over your shoulder for the time we are filling the BUNKERS. As we are now filling three , two big ones at his brothers and the one at his place. Once again we have moved up on equipment as now his brother bought a old 5400 John Deere selfpropelled chopper and we have gone away from the side unload wagons to three BIG H/S rear unloads that will unload a load in less then two min. The down side of gong bigger is the fact that the tractors have to be bigger to handle the wagons . The key to good silage is packing and leveling . As for bunkers Eugene's is the only one with cement sides . His brother Vernon 's were built in a rush when his silo blew out the bottom . He rented a small dozer and i built a trench into a bank behind the barn about 150 feet long by 30 wide and 10 feet deep at the far end with a ramp leading down so we could drive thru . The first year there was no cement floor that came the next year before we filled it and we made it wider and we did another one a couple years later only bigger . This year we chopped real close to 150 acres total.Vernon is milking 90 head and Eugen and i have a total of 82 Angus . we feed with a Skid Steer We cover the piles with plastic and place old tires cut in half to hold the plastic down . IF your careful and fold the plastic back as you get into the pile you can get a couple years out of it. So between renting a dozer and pouring some cement that will pay for itself fast . And if you can fix equipment and have the help and for your operation get atleast two or three extra hands to do maybe thirty to forty acres and that will take you two to three good days with older equipment you will do fine . We also feed grain that we grind our selfs and the corn is still Picked and 4x4 round bales . we also plant barley for the grinding .

If you have a bit of a slope that is convienient to where you will feed, I would dig a pit silo.

To keep the silage fresh, you will have to feed to a depth of about 4 inches per day across the face. Feeders will need about 7 lbs per day per 100 lbs body weight. Silage weighs about 35 lbs per cubic foot.

Got 10 head at 500 lbs? 5 X 7 = 35 lbs per day per head. 10 head X 35 lbs is 350 lbs per day from the face. 350 / 35 (lbs/cu ft) = 10 cubic feet of silage per day.

Since cu ft is W X H X D, 10 cu ft/ .333 Depth = 30 sq ft of face need to keep the silage fresh. (the .333 is 4 inches converted to feet) Bunker (face) is 8 ft wide? 30 sq ft /8 = 3.75 height of face.

Of course, these are average estimates only but will be close. You will need to adjust the amounts for the number of head you have.

An old master farmer told me years ago that silage is the cheapest feed going. Figure about 15 tons per acre, vice hay at 3-4 tons. Your silage will cost about $300, or about $ 20 per ton. If you produce hay, it will be worth about $200, at least this year, or more, meaning an acre will prooduce about $6-800 worth of hay, which is usually very easy to sell for a profit. But the same tonnage would require about four times the amount of acreage to produce the same result.

We produce about 30 acres or so per year to feed 60-80 cows through the winter. STarted with a $ 500 NH717, and a JD 125 chuck wagon into a trench. That is now a NH 892, and JD 716's into a concrete bunk with a blacktop floor. We did put concrete into the trench floor, but over the years, the walls slowly spalled into the trench, mixing a lot of dirt into the silage, and the cows, while they will eat about anything, still refuse a lot of mud. It was a pain to clean out of the bunks, too. I also bought a used blower at a sale for $50 and built a short spout, put it on a rotator base for a chopper spout and bolted it to the top of the blower- it beats putting a wagon into the trench to unload and greatly extends the life of the floor chains and running gear. I've had the new above ground for four years now, and love it over the trench. We blow in from the side, and level and pack with a four wheel loader tractor. No more dirt in the bunks, the herds eats it all, no more mud in the bottom of the trench, no groundhogs, and it produces great silage.

I also use a few bags of wheat seed or a few bushels of feed wheat on top during the last packing job. It will germinate in a few days and form a tight seal across the top, and rather than pay big oil for a hunk of plastic, I just feed the cover with the feed. The cows seem to love it, and it seals the silage very well.

The blacktop floor is about half the cost of concrete, just make sure the mix is for a high acid environment- it will hold up better. use at least a four to six inch layer.

We also plant about two acres of corn for every one we plan to use for silage. Most years, the grain will pay for for our silage, and in a dry year, most of it, and the extra acreage can be chopped if needed. It's also a heck of a lot faster than hay, ton for ton. Good luck with it- you'll learn tricks as you go- biggest one I've found yet is to take an extra day and make sure your equipment is ready, your knives sharp and set the shear bar tight, and fill as fast as you can and keep it packed tight.

We use both bags and silos.We have our own bagger, it is 8ft machine a 150ft bag holds about 120 tons cornsilage.To hire a bagger is about $550-750 and that includes the bag.There are a few 6 and 7 ft baggers around,they are used for hi-moisture corn but will work for cornsilage as well.In the winter time you will need to remove very little feed three to four inches.Do not make the feed to wet as a bag can and will freeze solid.Doesn't hurt anything but makes more work busting up frozen chunks with loader.Consider a few loads of stone for a base under your bag,getting stuck in fall and spring mud is not fun.Most people who hate bags have them out in nowhere without a base. Keep the area around the bags clean and spray any weeds around the bag.In 18 years we have never had coon damage,but have had some rat problems. We lay pvc pipes 3ft long beside bags with rat posion in them(keeps it dry and away from other animals.If birds ever become a problem lay a few short pieces of garden hose on the tp of the bag(it looks like a snake to a bird)In good corn 200bu. we figure 24 to 30 tons to the acre.