I’ll Take That With A Side Of Corn Silage, Please September 7, 2013

Before I mention chopping corn silage in a “happy birthday” post to Trent, here’s a review of what that actually means. This is meant to be a farming blog afterall… before my life took the wife/mother tangent! This was written in August of 2010.

The Pleasant Farm

Once upon a time, when the time came to chop corn silage, I clearly remember wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt in the mornings.  But some of our corn got planted early this year, which means it’s ready to be chopped sooner, which means we’re in the dead H.E.A.T of August. 

Most of the general population realizes that cattle eat grain and hay.  Nice work, people!  But there’s also quite a few cattle that eat corn silage as their main entrée.  Not to give you a miniature crop science class, but to serve corn silage to your cattle, the entire stalk of corn is chopped up into pieces less than an inch big, all the pieces are stuffed into a silo to ferment, and then it is fed over the span of the next year.  Whereas corn is harvested when it is very dry (13% moisture, give or take), corn silage is made…

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The Story Of Corn Silage: For My Nephews October 6, 2011

The cows are hungry!  What should we give them to eat?

 

Corn silage!

 

Grandpa and Aunt Jessie go out to the field of corn.  Aunt Jessie drives the blue tractor and chopper, which chops up the whole stalk of corn into tiny pieces for the cows to eat.  The pieces fly from the chopper into the silage wagon.

 

Only two rows of corn get chopped at a time, so it’s going to be a long couple of days to chop enough corn to fill the silo.  Fill that silage wagon all the way up!

 

Then Grandpa drives his tractor with the full silage wagon to the silo.  The silage gets dumped from the wagon into the blower, which blows the silage into the silo.  It will stay in the silo until it’s time to feed it to the cows.

 

Mmmmm, the cows love to eat corn silage.  Yummy!

 

Can you chop corn silage?  First you need a tractor…

 

… and then a chopper…

 

… and then a silage wagon!

Now GET TO WORK!