“HALF MOON” TYPE OF SILAGE STACK SAVES MEN & WORK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 40, 19 September 1949, Page 4

“HALF MOON” TYPE OF SILAGE STACK SAVES MEN & WORK

(By E. R. Marryatt, Fields Instructor, Whakatane) The Department of Agriculture’s “Haymaking” Bulletin, No. 290, draws attention to the virtues of the novel curved haystack which is convex to windward and concave to leeward. This idea has been modified and adapted for silage stacks with considerable advantage to builders of these stacks. The curved side of the silage stack forms a half-circle and instead of being concave, the other side is straight, forming the diameter of the halfcircle so that the plan of the-stack is a “half moon.”

This style of silage stack is ideal where a mast and boom or swinging fork type of stacker is used because material can be dropped exactly where it is required on the stack thus greatly reducing forking and increasing even compression of the material in the stack. Only one man is required on the stack when a stack of this ‘half moon” shape is built.

Best Silage The best silage can be made in this type of stack too as was proven by the winning entry of Mr B. S. Mottram’s in this year’s Hay and Silage Competition conducted by Federated Farmers, Waimana Branch. Equally good silage can, of course, be made in other shaped stacks or in pits but by using the “half-moon” type of stack, Mr Mottram and others who have adopted it claim that the work of silage making is considerably reduced.

As it will be practically impossible to get a note about this novel idea into the Journal of Agriculture in time for use by farmers in this year’s silage making I am using this method of letting as many local farmers as possible know of the innovation. The difficulty here is that I cannot publish either a diagram or a photograph, both of which will appear in the Journal in time. f! Method Very Simple

But the method is very simple and consists in making the semicircular sweep of the stack follow the swing of the grab or of the lift of the stacker and the straight side of the stack will be centred on and nearest to the mast or to the stack*er. If the straight side is built in line with the direction of the prevailing wind there is also much less chance of trouble from wind blowing heat through the stack as the pointed “horn” of the “half moon” will tend to spread the wind so that it will flow around rather than through the stack.