Non-Stop Silage Making Equipment

Non-Stop Silage Making Equipment HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Hay & Forage Harvesting 25-6-7 There's no waiting around when making corn silage at Lowell and Tom Weitzenkamp's feedyard near Hooper, Nebraska. The men use a chopper which cuts and blows silage into a rear-dump wagon. When the wagon is full, the operator opens the huge tailgate and empties the freshly cut silage right onto the ground at one end of the field. All silage is chopped into the same wagon and it's always emptied on-the-go. Another worker loads the piled silage into a side-dump semi-trailer using a loader tractor. The trailer holds several dumps from the chopper wagon. When it's full, he parks the loader and drives the semi to the concrete-floored bunker silo where he dumps without getting out of the truck. Using this method, the chopper never waits for a wagon so it never stops. Even if the hauling process needs to stop while the driver packs silage or tends to other chores around the feedlot, the chopper never needs to wait. It just keeps dumping its loads in the fields. The Weitzenkamps fabricated both the chopper wagon and the side-dump trailer in their shop. They made a large three-point mounted box scraper that comes in handy for spreading silage in the bunker. The scraper's top link allows it to swivel on the lower hitch points. This lets them raise the front while the rear blade stays down, so material being spread with it flows out the sides. The scraper is also used to fill holes and level feedlots. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Lowell Weitzenkamp, 723 Heatherwood Dr., Fremont, Neb. 68025 (ph 402 567-2285).

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