It’s been somewhat busy on our farm lately. We are gearing up for harvest to start within the next week or so, but in the meantime we recently had corn silage chopped on our farm. We do this so we have additional feed for our cattle to eat besides just hay and grass throughout the year.
We had it custom chopped again this year since we do not own a forage harvester.
As I discussed last year, we don’t currently have a silage pit, so Kevin uses hay bales to pack the silage in between.
Once the forage harvester chops the wet corn, a tractor pulling a cart brings it to the “silage pit”.
He dumps it in a pile and then Kevin, with his assistant HD, takes his tractor and piles it up and packs it tight.
It needs to be packed nice and tight so it will form a crust-like top layer. This will seal the corn in and cause it to ferment and turn into silage.
This is what the freshly chopped corn looks like. Looks delicious right? The cattle think so!
We still have some silage left from last year, which we are currently feeding to some of the heifers that we have behind our barn in the cattle lots. While we were waiting for Kevin to fill up the feed wagon, Ax decided to play in some mud. It is necessary for farmkids to bath every night, can you see why?
Kevin does a mixture of silage, ground cornstalks, and some whole corn from last year in the feed wagon.
When he’s ready to drive into the lot, HD is in charge of opening the gates so Kevin can drive the tractor in.
He’s getting to be a really good helper!
The heifers know what’s coming! They love the feed and are always eager to eat it every night.
This night Ax got to ride in the tractor with his daddy to feed the cattle.
They are digging right in before Kevin’s even done filling the bunks!
Yum! Yum! Yum!
After Kevin drives back out, HD has to make sure he closes the gate tight!
So, that’s the scoop on silage and feeding the cattle. They also have hay available to them right now and will be moved out onto cornstalks as soon as we get some fields harvested. Here’s one last picture of Ax being goofy. Not sure what he’s looking at or what he’s doing here. You just never know with this kid!
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