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Post by BuckSkin on Jan 7, 2022 10:16:43 GMT
John Street Russell County Kentucky Wednesday_15-December-2021 Silo 37° 01' 15.809" North Latitude 85° 01' 7.377" West Longitude Elevation: 1016' Camera Position 37° 01' 8.555" North Latitude 85° 01' 0.156" West Longitude Elevation: 1009'  |
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pontiac1940
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Post by pontiac1940 on Jan 7, 2022 13:29:46 GMT
Is the silo at a dairy farm? There are some silos here, but a lot of large feedlots use open silage bunkers. Feedlots are a huge business in our county... here. Over one million feedlot cattle are produced here annually. The 2016 census estimated there were 477,807 feeder cattle in the county, which are turned through the system at an average 2.5 times per year. |
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Post by BuckSkin on Jan 7, 2022 14:25:52 GMT
Is the silo at a dairy farm? Yes it is; most silos around here are at dairy farms; although, we do have a few beef operations that use them. Another feed source and storage method that is getting more and more popular is distiller's syrup/slop. You sign a contract to feed the stuff and they provide you with a huge tank that looks very much like jackscraps mural-painted water tanks, except without the mural. This stuff is an orangish-yellow syrup that is some sort of left-over from the manufacture of whiskey; we probably have more whiskey manufacturers around here than any other industry; it is not a very large employer, though. After a month or so of drinking this slop, whatever is eating it begins to become that color. After feeding it for a while, everything on the place will have picked up the color, even the farmer's wife and kids; they will start to have an orangish-yellow hue about them. Back to the silage: lately, more and more farmer's are beginning to use above-ground un-protected storage in huge piles. Although you save the expense and labor of filling and feeding from a silo, you will lose quite a few more cows as a result of feeding this moldy rotten mess --- which in my opinion should be outlawed --- along with the distiller's slop, corn gluten, and most of the other el-cheapo sources of livestock feed. Corn silage that comes out of a genuine silo looks and smells good enough to eat; that black and moldy mess that comes from ground storage is only eaten because it is either that or starve. It is impossible to get a decent steak or any other cut of beef anymore as a direct result of feeding these waste products instead of good yellow corn. That, coupled with the media-driven politically correct environmentally friendly so-called "lean" "healthy" tasteless shoe-leather tough meat that is forced upon us now has created three or four generations who have no idea what a really good cut of meat tastes like. |
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pontiac1940
CE Members
Posts: 6,359
Open to constructive criticism of photos: Yes
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Post by pontiac1940 on Jan 7, 2022 14:32:28 GMT
Corn silage that comes out of a genuine silo looks and smells good enough to eat; About 40 years ago a (late) acquaintance had big blue Harvestor silos for his feedlot. The end product smelled like good Irish pipe tobacco. |
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Post by BuckSkin on Jan 7, 2022 14:43:43 GMT
Corn silage that comes out of a genuine silo looks and smells good enough to eat; About 40 years ago a (late) acquaintance had big blue Harvestor silos for his feedlot. The end product smelled like good Irish pipe tobacco. The big advantage of the big blue Harvestore silos is the fact that they feed from the bottom instead of feeding from the top like all other silos do. Since all silage is added from the top, with a Harvestore, first in is always first out and the contents is "rotated" like rotating stock on a store shelf. As good an idea as this is, Harvestore silos are extremely expensive compared to normal silos; and, should anything ever happen to the unloading mechanism, it is underneath all that silage and impossible to access; so, there is your winter's feed inaccessible within your tremendously expensive and now useless silo. For the last forty or more years, people around here have nick-named Harvestore silos "Blue Tombstones" as they are often the direct cause of the demise of a farm, driving it on over the edge into bankruptcy, with the tall blue landmarks marking it's grave. |
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