Building a Silage Pit

[Chuckie]

For all of you with silage pits, how do you set your pit up? I was wondering some ways that would hold down on the costs.
One man dug a deep roaway in the side of a hillk, and lined the side wirh plastic. The bottom was concrete.

One year we put double rows of hay together down the sides ad the other half. We put plastic on the sides of he bales. It semed OK, but not as good as
chuckie

 

[Medic24]

The concrete is usually the costly part here, but I have a pit that doesn't use concrete, and a long time dairy farmer friend has two massive pits that are earth bottoms as well.

The downside to that of course is they must be some what sloping so that the effluent can have a place to drain out, and even with that, it will still get sloppy after a while. Plus, you can count on a 'crust' of unusable silage on the bottom.

I have tried placing plastic on the bottom as well, and it just made a huge mess, you wind up cutting it out in strips as you pull out silage, and it still becomes a bog. But both of the above can be done. Concrete around here is over 110.00 per c.yard, so it will be years before it would pay for itself.

As far as the sides, on the one I use packed and bolted used tires, the packing adds weight so when you hit them with the bucket, they dont dislodge as easy unless you are trying to play bumper cars. the packing also makes them some what air tight on the sides so you are not so concerned with holes in the plastic liner. We hold down the plastic cover with the same used tires as well.
One thing though, the tires that are on top holding it all down, we drilled large holes in the sidewalls to allow water to go through, as there is nothing like breeding skeeters in the summer, and getting soaked with icewater in the dead of winter when you move the tires around.

One year, we had so much extra silage that we simply laid plastic out on an almost flat piece of ground and covered the top with plastic as well, kinda like a plastic sandwich with a silage center.

The key to all of this of course to allow as little air in the pile as possible to prevent spoilage. Good Luck! :cboy:

 

[Chuckie]

Medic,
I am not exactly following you on your use of the tires. You wouldn't happen to have picture would you? My tiny brain, only one cell is firing.
Chuckie

 

[toby]

My Dad had a earthen pit dug into a hill side. The only plastic sheeting he used was to cover the contents when finished. One of things that made this pit sucessful was he would drive a tractor over the contents, packing it much tighter especially on the edges than some of the more modern pits. He used concret blocks cable and old tires to hold the plastic cover in place. Usually by late December there was enough frozen rain and snow to hold the cover in place when the cold north wind blew across NE Nebraska.

 

[rkm]

Why dig a hole? I've been there, done that. I have better luck just stacking. I don't recommend putting plastic under the silage. Pack and pack and when you think you have packed enough pack again.

 

[IL Rancher]

We just stack and pile and pack on flat ground. If using semis to bring in it takes about 8 depending on the "type" of silage and how high you want to stack it. Than you use a bucket tractor to make sure everything is about even (No pits between dumpings of trailers, push up sides to make them steep and right width of pile) than take a lage tractor and pack the silage tight. When done we take a plastic tarp and cover the whole thing and seel the edges with sand. Works very well (Just don't pull the tarp too tight or it will split with temperature changes and watch for animal dug holes)...

While it isn't ideal we just couldn't justifty building a new bunker silo. Maybe if we fed more cattle, maybe if we used more silage than we use typically.. But the neighbor and I priced doing it and it was rough... Place used to have one but it was used as a burn put for some reason so the wooden sides that held the earth away are now gone and the cement bottom is pretty much buckled and broke and covered in 4 inches of sandy and ash.

 

[Chuckie]

When you just pile it up and cover it with a plastic tarp, is there a lot of spoilage and waste?
Chuckie

 

[rkm]

I have less waste with stacks than I had with trench silos with earthen sides. Just my experence. Important for both is site and packing. Talk to your local Ag Extention Office.

 

[IluvABbeef]

Why dig a hole? I've been there, done that. I have better luck just stacking. I don't recommend putting plastic under the silage. Pack and pack and when you think you have packed enough pack again.

That's what we do here too. The silage is on dirt-ground, no need for a plastic tarp underneath, and on a hill so's the excess water that does accumulate can drain away. We pack and pack and pack, stick the silage tarp over top, and put a half a dozen 5x6 round bales on top to pack it down further, and hold the tarp down with another dozen or so bales. Just so long as the bales are completely on the plastic, no spoilage will occur.

 

[Howdyjabo]

We don't have silage- but we use pits to store byproducts.

Talk to your local concrete supplier.
Ours makes blocks out of left over concrete.

We dig a trench into a hill and makes walls out of the blocks(just like leggos). And we concrete the floor- our ground is too messy thru the winter to handle the tractor traffic.

The blocks are heavy so you need a big loader- or hire someone to deliver and set them.

We have one wide one that we make into bays with the blocks. We can move the blocks and make bigger or smaller bays depending on what we need.

Its more expensive- but once its there its there forever.
If we don't need pits any more someday- We can put a roof over it and have a DANDY commodity shed/barn/shop ect.
Whenever I spend money I like to have a backup plan so its not wasted

 

[Chuckie]

I have seen people line up round bales of hay and put plastic on the sides to seperate the sileage from the hay and pack it that way. I am not sure how it turned out through as far as waste.
Chuckie

 

[ChrisB]

I've used hay bales without plastic lining on the ground, bags, concrete with dirt sides lined with plastic, and finally concrete bottom with concrete sides. They all work and waste can be minimal by packing it good and by mixing the spoiled stuff up with the good stuff a bit when you feed it. I think what is best will be determined by your committment level to feeding cattle and to specifically feeding silage. Also how long into the spring you want to feed.

Concrete on the bottom is really nice in the spring when things start getting muddy. And concrete sides are easier to load out of in my opinion. But it takes some money and work so if your only going to do it for a couple years it's not going to be worth it. Bags are nice, you can fill them quickly and there is no waste at all and can be sealed up again and kept over summer, but the cost can add up if it's a long term deal.

We made ours by first digging out into a slight hill, then poured concrete on the bottom and that is all we used the first year (with plastic lined sides). The next year my Dad built formes for panels and bought a concrete mixer for the tractor and we started pouring panels. He kept experimenting until he had things just right and we poured 16 panels in all. Then we stood the panels up with the front end loader and pushed them into place. We had some problems such as the lifting eyes pulling out and dropping a panel on the hood of the tractor, and basically one whole side tipping in while back filling. But nobody got hurt and it turned out pretty nice. Total cost was I'm guessing around $3000 for a 24' x 85' x 8' bunker. I don't even want to know how many hours we put in, but it seemed like all we did in our spare time for a couple months.

 

[Chuckie]

Sounds like you have a nice silage pit ChrisB. I bet when that concrete slab hit the hood of that tractor, it left a knot in your stomach. We could use a pit like that.
There is a barn outside of town here that is about 150 ft long. Down the center of it is a sileage pit, that is concreted, sides and bottom. The on the side sheds off from the sileage pit, there are feed troughs all the way down.
I used to help feed there every day after school in the winter. Someone would chip the sileage off with a fork and shovel it into a conveyor that ran up to the troughs. We would take a corn scoop and push the sileage down the trough either way, and it seemed to hang together pretty well so you could push a large amount. It always steamed and was warm, and had a sweet smell, like a cross between pickles and pipe tobacco. I guess since water never reached the pit, it never had a foul odor.

The barn is still there, but they are tearing the hill down that is around the barn for fill in dirt in other areas. It won't be long till the barn dissappears. I am sure that it could be modernized with a belt that takes the sileage down the trough to make it easier.

I would like to be able to snap my fingers and move it where our cattle are.