Kyle Pennings and his brother, Trevor, built an unroller to save time and fuel in their compost bedded dairy barn. Each day they use it to unroll about half a bale of cornstalks for bedding for 30 cows.

They designed the unroller to fit over a tiller so they can till and add corn stalks at the same time. 

"We've been doing bed pack for a long time and went with compost bedding for cow comfort," Pennings says of their Ontario dairy operation. "Before, we had to run another tractor and run the bale through a bale chopper. Now we can do it all at once, and it's a one-person job."

The brothers used the chain guard from a Butler silo unloader, welded 2-in. fingers of 1/4-in. flat bar on two 8-in. rollers, and built a square tubing/plywood frame to hold the bale. The unroller works off hydraulics, while the tiller is powered off the pto and 3-pt. hitch. 

Between going through the unroller and the tiller on the second day, the cornstalks break down enough to compost, Pennings says. 

"It only takes about 5 minutes to work up the pack by tilling and spreading at the same time," he notes.