silage feed solutions?

angusangus

I have a yard away from the farm where I keep about 30 suckler cows and their followers ! Its a self feed system which works ideal apart from I notice an awful lot of waste silage they pull out ! I have an electric wire across the face !
I'm looking for a cheap solution to avoid the expensive barriers ! Anyone have an idea? I have a small tractor and yard scraper there on site is too far too bring the big tractor every day or even every week to feed into feeders or move a big barrier

Markcheese

Would it be possible to put sleepers or an esb pole in front of the pit face below the electric fence , to stop cattle treading on it .. could probably be moved with the scraper...

angusangus

Markcheese wrote: »

Would it be possible to put sleepers or an esb pole in front of the pit face below the electric fence , to stop cattle treading on it .. could probably be moved with the scraper...

Was thinking about this and would they not pull this out of their way?

reps4

how wide is the pit face? buy 2 or 3 round feeders and half them across pit face.

easy to move too. will need to be secured tightly though. easily enough done with brackets.

angusangus

reps4 wrote: »

how wide is the pit face? buy 2 or 3 round feeders and half them across pit face.

easy to move too. will need to be secured tightly though. easily enough done with brackets.

Its about 40 ft wide I'll bring a tape tomorrow is walled at each side

Timmaay

Sounds like your giving them too much an allocation of silage, if they were hungry enough they wouldn't be pulling it out. I would try cutting that back 1stly before I'd go throwing in any sort of barriers or ring feeders. What you could try also is only give them silage afew hours of the day, this way they are only eating when they are at the pit face, and not picking or routing away.

angusangus

Timmaay wrote: »

Sounds like your giving them too much an allocation of silage, if they were hungry enough they wouldn't be pulling it out. I would try cutting that back 1stly before I'd go throwing in any sort of barriers or ring feeders. What you could try also is only give them silage afew hours of the day, this way they are only eating when they are at the pit face, and not picking or routing away.

Problem is yards about 10 miles from farm so once a day I'm there ! A cheap barrier solution that they won't pull out would be my best option I think

tanko

If the cattle are wasting one bale of silage per week, at €20 euro/bale that's costing you over €400 over a five month winter.
If they're wasting two bales a week it's costing you almost €1000 over just one winter.
I think you should keep this in mind when you're deciding whether a solution is "expensive" or not. Sometimes you have to spend some money to save more money.

keep going

esb pole with a couple of brackets on the bottom to stop it rolling,going to do self feeding myself this year for the first time in a long time.thinking back all i did was leave a cross member on the pole on one side and it worked grand

carrollsno1

Back when my grandfather was doing self feed silage we put an iron bar across the front of the pit face no more than 3 foot high and electrified it all i can remember about self feed silage at homs was its a waste of time and hardship but im working on a dairy farm now where theres 300+ Fresh calved cows being fed by self feed it saves a lot of time but i would still rather burn diesel and feed out with a loader all we have to do in once a day after morning milking is move the wires 16cm on 3rd/2nd cut and maize pit and move 22cm on first cut pit

angusangus

carrollsno1 wrote: »

Back when my grandfather was doing self feed silage we put an iron bar across the front of the pit face no more than 3 foot high and electrified it all i can remember about self feed silage at homs was its a waste of time and hardship but im working on a dairy farm now where theres 300+ Fresh calved cows being fed by self feed it saves a lot of time but i would still rather burn diesel and feed out with a loader all we have to do in once a day after morning milking is move the wires 16cm on 3rd/2nd cut and maize pit and move 22cm on first cut pit

I couldn't say self feed is a waste of time and hardship ! It saves me time and labour ! The electric wire system does waste some silage I'm gonna try the ESB pole

Good loser

Could you pay some one to fill enough feeders for a week? With fallback self feed option.

carrollsno1

angusangus wrote: »

I couldn't say self feed is a waste of time and hardship ! It saves me time and labour ! The electric wire system does waste some silage I'm gonna try the ESB pole

Each to their own im just opposed to pit silage as a whole anyway

blue5000

angusangus wrote: »

Its about 40 ft wide I'll bring a tape tomorrow is walled at each side

We used to have one pipe 3 or 4 inch diameter sitting on top of the walls, a lighter electrified bar hung down from this on chains with insulators on top of the chains. There was hooks on the chains so you could adjust the height of the bottom bar. Just push in the top bar with a fork once a day. Sounds like your electric wire is too high.