"Silage facers have always been a weak equipment link for us," says one of the owners of Riverview Dairy in Morris, Minn. "So after a history of using mechanical facers where bearings quickly wore out, chains broke, sprockets failed and hydraulic oil leaked all over our loaders, we decided to build our own rig."

To solve the problem, Riverview came up with a custom-built silage facing tool they call the Easy Rake. The device works so well they decided to patent it and build it for commercial sale because so many dairies and feedlots inquired about it.

The Easy Rake is available in 12-ft. or 16-ft. wide versions that mount on the front of an industrial loader tractor. It has 2-ft. long spear-like teeth mounted about 14 in. apart across the front frame. The side frames are supported with tubular cross members. The rear of the Easy Rake has a rugged box frame and brackets rigged just like those on a quick-tach bucket. This allows the operator to rake silage from a stack and quickly switch to a bucket or grapple fork for loading.

Operators say the best aspect of the Easy Rake is that there are no moving parts, no hydraulic hoses, no chains and no sprockets. It's easy to operate and virtually maintenance-free. To use the Easy Rake, the loader driver simply lifts the teeth above the top of the silage pile and uses down pressure from the loader arms to drag the teeth through the packed silage. The Easy Rake doesn't plug in any type of silage, nor does it cut the silage into smaller pieces, which some mechanical models do. It works equally well in the winter or summer, in hay silage or corn silage, and it doesn't matter if the silage is wet, dry or frozen, according to Riverview Dairy.