Silage bales

[grassfarmer]

It's awfully quiet around here so I'll pose a question I've wondered about for a while. While out driving the other day I spotted several lots of individualy wrapped silage bales that were sitting up on their flat ends. Why would a person go out and turn them up that way - does anyone know the reason behind it? Is their a wrapper that tips them up on end?

[dalek]

Probably just to make it easier to move with a grapple on the loader, since most of the grapples seem to open side to side.

[k-way]

The bales are placed on there ends so that they can be picked up from there sided with a hydraulic clamp. You are not suppose to make hole in the plastic otherwise the bale will spoil.

[amazed]

You want to avoid poking holes in the plastic and the most plastic is on the ends where it overlaps more than on the sides making it tougher to poke holes in.

[grassfarmer]

OK, so I understand that most of the clamps you use here lift bales endways up but why go out to the field with the machine and turn them up on their ends and then leave them lying outall over the field? I assume they are being stored in the field until they are fed, is there a perceived storage advantage to them being up on end?

[cakadu]

Just a thought, but some people feed the bales right where they are at all winter. They run electic fence around what they don't want the cattle getting into and then let them graze the rest.

Saves moving them from the field and I would imagine that they unwrap a little better standing on end versus left laying there.

[dalek]

I've heard (and it makes sense to me) that storing on the flat, because the weight distributes evenly, keeps the plastic more firmly in place, where if you store on the round the bale tends to settle towards the ground and the plastic moves and can cause gaps. Can't say that I know for sure, individual wrapping is far too expensive and wastes too much plastic for our uses, we use a Tube-Line wrapper.

[grassfarmer]

dalek, how much does tube line wrapping cost compared to individual wrapping? I agree that wrapping looks expensive but if the weather is poor it sure beats making crappy hay. We have a lot of poor hay in this area this year and it is a terribly expensive feed. They start with good grass, cut it, rake it, rake it again, bale it and finish up with some straw quality feed.

[Joe-2]

We use a tube line wrapper and I figure 1 roll of plastic will do about 35 bales. At $87 dollars a roll that is $2.48 per bale.
I hear rumors that plastic will be over $100 per roll next year.
The other side of the coin is that it doesn't take much waste out of each bale to amount to $2.48.With bale silage there is virtually NO WASTE!!!
I baled some sorguhm that was mostly pigweed this summer.I intend on getting this feed tested and will post the results.Round bale silage is where it's at if you ask me!!!

[redcountry]

we have used a tubeline wrapper for the past 10 years, got it the spring of 95, at todays price of 30" plastic it cost about $1.60 per 4x4 silage bale, we do a average of 2500 bales per year.

a single bale wrapper cost$4.50 per bale to wrap, so our savings soon pay for the wrapper

the other savings is the tubeline is a one man operation and the speed is 10 times faster than a single wrapper, the down side is they can't be moved after they are wrapped

I should mention that not all tubelines are equal, we use a Reeves Wrapper a fully automatic one man operation.
they have a web site if anyone is wanting a look