Heavy-Duty Rubber Belts Provide Loader-Proof Floor Under Silage Pile

Heavy-Duty Rubber Belts Provide Loader-Proof Floor Under Silage Pile HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Forage Handling 21-1-29 Gerven Klompmaker had trouble with his front-end loader digging into the ground whenever he loaded silage out of his plastic-covered silage piles. The dirt and rocks were hard on his silo blower. The New Brunswick farmer solved the problem by placing heavy rubber belts on the ground under each pile. He bought five 200-ft. long, 3-ft. wide, and 3/4-in. thick belts from a local mine and rolled them out on the ground parallel to each other, leaving about a 3-ft. wide strip between each belt. Then he made two 80-ft. long piles of silage, placed end to end, on top of the belts and covered the piles with plastic. When loading out silage, the corners of the bucket ride on top of the belts to keep the bucket from digging into the ground. The tractor tires run on the belts without making any ruts. "I've used this idea for three years and it has worked great," says Klompmaker. "I refill my upright silos in winter from the piles, which are about 80 ft. long, 30 ft. wide, and 6 ft. high. I make two piles because the plastic that I use to cover them is available only in 100-ft. lengths. "I paid $800 for the five belts which I bought at a junkyard. They were originally used with a rock crusher. I tried to find more belts but I couldn't. They're too slippery to be used as cow mats. The belts won't rust or rot, and they can't move when the bucket is down because the tractor tires hold them down. Each belt weighs about 2 tons. I used the loader to move them." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Gerven Klompmaker, Box 736, Saint Quentin, New Brunswick, Canada E0K 1J0 (ph 506 235-2316).

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