Feeding directly from a pit

Green&Red

Feeding directly from a pit, does anyone do it?
My fear is that cows will consume too much energy pulling at it

blue5000

Not anymore, pits these days tend to be higher, contractors are leaving out half the blades so silage is longer.

Nekarsulm

The overhang inevitable falls down some night, if you are lucky it dosent fall on a cow's head, choking her over the rail of the barrier.
Then you have to fork it out and feed it some other way, as it heats and they won't eat it.

So you have to fork the top layer down by hand, which is slow and dangerous . You either fall yourself, or the top gives way, landing you on the ground or the top of the barrier.

It's nearly impossible to keep barriers propped away from the silage face by the right amount to avoid 1)wastage or 2) underfeeding the more timid cattle.

It was common in the 60's and 70's, but with mainly single and double chop silage it wasn't unusual to find teeth behind the barrier.

Timmaay

Only way it works I think is alongside more feed space (separate ring feeder/feed barrier), and regularly lifting the top layer with the shear grab. Which probably defeats the whole purpose of having it in the 1st place! It works reasonably well here with a roofed silage pit that is between two lean-to sheds, so the cows are crossing it anyways. Barriers etc on the face are a complete waste of time, too much hassle moving then cows knocking them etc, electric fence the only job for it.

patsy_mccabe

I have a walled pit here but never use it now since switching to baled silage. It became impossible to get contractors for the small acerage we were doing. Don't miss it. We had a barrier across the pit face. Between cattle loosing teeth, plastic and tyres falling down, cattle getting lumps on their shoulders from pushing in. I don't miss it.

carrollsno1

Worked on a fatm in the UK where they praised this system as being labour efficient etc. 350 odd cows yes you could technically feed them all in a couple of minutes but you were spending the rest of tge day pr#ckin aroubd with tyres so there wasnt too much or too little tyres near the edge of the pit then we had to scrape the yard twice a day. There was a lot of silage wasted and then in turn that ended up blocking the flow of slurry etc. Would have loved to have stayed on that farm nice people that owned it but i left the farm of the firm belief that bales are the only job.

Green&Red

Ya so all the old problems from the days when my dad used to fork it down from the top to them.
I was hoping someone would have some new fix

Timmaay

carrollsno1 wrote: »

Worked on a fatm in the UK where they praised this system as being labour efficient etc. 350 odd cows yes you could technically feed them all in a couple of minutes but you were spending the rest of tge day pr#ckin aroubd with tyres so there wasnt too much or too little tyres near the edge of the pit then we had to scrape the yard twice a day. There was a lot of silage wasted and then in turn that ended up blocking the flow of slurry etc. Would have loved to have stayed on that farm nice people that owned it but i left the farm of the firm belief that bales are the only job.

Nothing beats a wide feed passage, and bale handler that removes the plastic/net itself, zero manual labour. Next best is a shear grab with silage pit just beside you (only manual labour is removing tires/plastic back every few days). Closely followed by bales using normal spikes (getting out to remove the wrap/net), and bales in a ring feeder (ring feeder handy as no shoving in silage like with a feed passage, but you do gotta move the cows or have 2nd person to hold them back). Messing around with self feeding comes after all these methods for the reasons outlined by Carroll's.

Mooooo

Feeding passage, silage pit not too far from shed and biggest sheargrab the machine will handle ate the fastest way to feed I reckon. Given up rolling back pit covers just cut it off

TITANIUM.

We used to do it for years with just an electric fence across the front of it. We used to move it in a bit while the cows were up getting milked. A bit of piking involved the odd time alright. The silage base was on a fall away from the pit so twas always clean enough by the feed face. Looking back on it, it was a very easy way to feed cattle with no tractor required.

visatorro

The funky farmer does it with 50/60cows. Video on YouTube.
Used to do it here worked OK until they broke wire and wasted a few ton. Scraping after them was time consuming and nowadays you'd have to collect water. Don't miss it. Your as quick throwing out silage with tractor and now waste

einn32

visatorro wrote: »

The funky farmer does it with 50/60cows. Video on YouTube.
Used to do it here worked OK until they broke wire and wasted a few ton. Scraping after them was time consuming and nowadays you'd have to collect water. Don't miss it. Your as quick throwing out silage with tractor and now waste

He also scrapes his slurry straight into the spreader and off to the field! We used do it with railway sleepers across the front and a wicked electric fence. It worked fine most years but much easier now with a wide feed passage.

lakill Farm

I worked with a lad and he kept sucklers on an outfarm using a self feed pit with silage walls.

Key was not to over fill the pit. So when pit was full it was full. Rest of silage baled.

2 moving brackets on walls and 2 or 3 bars in pit face. Fence going wall to wall.

Scrap yard and cubicle sheds every 2 days into an open lagoon pit that wAs parallel to the pit. And bang the fence on. 80 cows and calves fed and cleaned in 90 mins max every 2 days.

carrollsno1

Green&Red wrote: »

Ya so all the old problems from the days when my dad used to fork it down from the top to them.
I was hoping someone would have some new fix

Look they had the new system of doing it, low pits and a system for measuring requirements but we put 3 if not 4 cuts into the one pit which was more pr#ckin around opening and resealing pits in the dead heat of summer then messing with the cover in the pisses of rain in the winter too thered be less handling with bales.

I had respect for the farmer there but i noticed that at thediscussion groups for swlf feeding a lot of the lads promoting it were gentlemen farmers who would have it handy either way looking at someone else feed the cows, while most of tbe lads interested in getting into it were lads who looked like there was a bit of work about then to be fair.