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Andrea Templin owns a farm in Schleswig-Holstein, close to the state capital city of Kiel, about 10 km from the Baltic Sea. The graduated agricultural machine mechanic farmer and state-certified agricultural manager runs his farm together with his wife, his father-in-law, a farm manager, and seasonal workers. The 142 hectare farm specialises in milk production and there are plans to further expand the operations in the near future. In his farm, Andreas rears 330 feeding pigs, 100 dairy cows, 50 bulls and 220 calves and piglets which require large amounts of forage feed and bale silage has increasingly become an integral part of Andreas’ forage and feeding management systems. Bale silage provides great flexibility and requires little technology and effort “We have been producing bale silage for 20 years. For us, bale silage is ideal especially to harvest and conserve crops from later cuts and from small and remote fields from our farm. We have calves and piglets across different farms which are several kilometres apart, and feeding and transporting our forage in big bales is practical and has paid off over many years.” On one of the farms, Andreas’ father-in-law feeds the animals manually, without support from any modern feeding system. The round bale is simply placed on a movable feeding table and feeding is done manually. At another farm, the bale is placed on the feeding table using a wheel loader and is moved whenever necessary allowing livestock to feed themselves directly from the bales. When on the field, a front-end loader places the silage bales into a hayrack. According to Andreas, feeding bale silage offers advantages over clamp silage: “Bale silage provides great flexibility and feeding requires little technology. I don’t have to supply feedstock and I save on the high capital investments needed for silos or clamps”. Important considerations for producing high-quality bale silage The quality of bale silage is significantly dependent on the forage ensiled in the bale after cutting. “We aim for a dry matter content of at least 30%. We hire contractors for producing our bales as I believe that use of good, modern equipment is critical. The bale-wrapping units are particularly important, they have to be equipped with an extra slicing rotor and sharp knives to cut the forage correctly so to increase bale compression density and facilitate the manual feeding process.” “In my experience, using a variable compressor chamber has the advantage that the bale compression is optimal. I wrap my bales with six layers of stretch film immediately after compression. For my wrapping I prefer bale-wrappers with three reels of film, which allows me to wrap bales simultaneously, saving a lot of time.” Film quality is also an important aspect for producing bale silage, says Andreas. “We only use high-quality film as we don’t want to have any surprises with the quality of the silage.” Bale storage and handling “We handle bales with a bale gripper and store two bales high. About half of our bales are stored on a concrete-base surface and we pay attention that bales do not touch each other by storing them 4 to 5 cm apart to reduce risk of mould development. For the bales that we store directly on the field we use a bird net to protect bales against bird damage. Revenue generation The easy handling of bales is another advantage to Andreas as he sells good quality bale silage in surplus to neighbouring horse farms. “Bale silage can be handled and transported very easily, so we can sell some of our bales creating an additional income for our farm. Also good quality silage can be sold at higher prices than forage from clamp silage”. “Film disposal remains a problem for us. Merchants, contractors or normal waste collection accept to collect the film. We would very much welcome a film disposal solution that farmers could count on and, ideally, free of charge by installing collecting points e.g. at merchants.” < Back to Spring 2010 Newsletter |
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