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Manitoba | Ideally you would not spread the silage the whole length as that will hold up the packing process unless the chopper is really slow. The suggested technique is called progressive wedge where you spread 6 inch layers of silage in a slope up to the desired height packing as you go. the thin layer is the key as Basically impossible to adequately pack very thick layers as the weight of the packing tractor gets spread out and the bottom of the thick layer is not packed adequately. The following link describes the technique. http://www.das.psu.edu/news/dd200503-01. But you are not going to always get 6 inches in reality so just try and use it as a goal.
We make similar sized piles and find that if the silage is coming in quickly we have to run one pushing tractor and one packing tractor if we want to do a good job of packing. So one guys pushes (and packs while doing so) and the other tractor just drives. in a drive over pile the non pushing tractor spends most of his time driving back and forth width wise as the pushing tractor pushes length wise. in a 250 foot pile I would guess a good start point would be around 50 to 75 feet from the desired end of the pile and then once you get to the height you want you start having the trucks dropping further and further back. I usually run the push tractor and like to get the trucks to drop the silage across the width of the pile vs length wise. I find when doing that I can can go right through the pile they left in one pass without powering out in the tractor and it just goes better for me. 3 or 4 passes this way and the truckload is spread and I am ready for the next truck. for safety as I go higher I always go a little higher on the outside edges before going higher on the middle. That way the tractor is always sloping in to the middle of the pile as you go higher and you are on the outside edge. Then when close to the height I want I even it out. Not a huge slope but it keeps you angled in instead of rolling over the edge and you get a much better pack on the outside edges. (please don't ask why I am sensitive about rolling over the edge)
If we can we try to keep the pile narrow enough to cover length wise with one piece of plastic. wont work with 60 feet wide, think the widest you can get is 66feet. Sure makes it easy to cover the pile though if you can just pull one piece over the whole length and weight it down. To secure the plastic (tie together) when going width wise we overlap the plastic about 1 to 1 1/2 feet and then use 2 2 by 4's. place both pieces of plastic edges together with one 2 by 4 running along the same edge. roll the 2 by 4 up in the plastic until tight, then nail the other 2 by 4 to the first one that is wrapped in the plastic. Probably we would use 3 or 4 of these for a seam over a 60 foot wide base pile. they don't have to be butted together, spread them out but make sure the plastic between them is rolled up as well. the wider you overlap the plastic the better the seal. you won't have to worry about wind opening up the pile on you.
tire sidewalls butted together work best for covering but it's a pile of work. we have been using straw the last few years with good success. we use a straw chopper to blow the straw up the pile adn leave a good layer over as much of the pile as we can. as long os you don't have a big wind the day of the covering it holds up well. also helps a lot in winter as you don't have the big layer of frozen silage to deal with.
hope that helps. | |
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Question about making a silage pile.
