PIT ENSILAGE

Taranaki Daily News, 4 August 1930, Page 13

PIT ENSILAGE

ADVANTAGES OVER STACKS CONSERVATION OF FODDER. ADDRESS BY MR. J. M. SMITH. .. Last year the Stratford Demonstration Farm Society authorised the construction of a concrete hillside pit for ensilage making and excellent results were obtained. The observations of the ch: A) man, Mr. J. M. Smith, at the annual meeting on Saturday were: — In common with the majority of farms in the Slratfoid district where the country is sEghtly broken, several fairly good sites were available, sa.d Mr. Smith. The main points about a site for a hillside pit are firstly the proximity of the paddocks where the crops are to be saved and to the paddocks where the feeding out is to be done, and secondly to secure" a hillside with sufficient depth and with good access and exit to and from the pit bottom;‘The latter is very important 1 ' as' it.’ must be renifeniberc-d that practically thewhole of the carting is to be' done during the winter months, when with heavy loads of ensilage the cutting up of the roadway will be considerable. A very suitable sit o , conforming to both of these conditions was .selected. The acreage of arable land that can be called on to fill the pit is about .30 acres, while the pit bottom strikes a conglomerate that in itself makes a very suitable road. In this instance, it was possible to have one road leading in and another leading' out, both with good grades. The matter of having the two roads is not so important provided there is sufficient room at the pit bottom''to turn, and there is a good grade out. ; The two roads are an ‘ advantage, however, as turning with a waggon at the pit bottom means a good deal of wear and tear even on a well metalled road, ' . ...

The value of having a pit built on a hillside is that it. minimises the actual handling of the green material and the finished ensilage, in that there is no undue lifting a? each operation means handling the stuff down. An opening, the whole depth of the pit, with the exception of the top four feet and four feet in width exists on the side of the pit looking ou £ from the hillside, and through this opening the ensilage is taken out during the feeding-out process. During the filling of the* pit the opening is boarded up as the pit is filled, the boards ' being rabbited together and so made perfectly airtight BUILDING THE ENSILAGE PIT. ■ In building the pit was. first bored out' to the prescribed size, which in. this instance was a circle 20 feet 8 inches in diameter to a depth-of 14 feet. The walls were kept perpendicular. On the inside of this pit was built a 'wall of concrete ’ four inches thick. Only one set of boxing three feet in depth was required which set completed a rih'g round ■ the pit. Nd boxing is required for the back of the concrete as the solid earth wall is sufficient. Buttresses six inches in thickness were built: on either side of the opening to give strength to the structure, for at this point there is. no earth wall to support the concrete. These buttresses are three feet wide. No reinforcing was used except for 10 feet back on either side of the opening and for the buttresses. The pit was brought two feet six inches, above ground level and a great deal of the spoil from the excavations .was used to form a ramp, to this height to allow, the sweeps to work to the edge of the pit. This ramp was graded, off 15 feet back from the pit and the rise of two feet six inches in 15 feetpresented no difficulty for sweeping. A removable Icamto roof of wood and iron was constructed in three sections and it had a fall of 1 in 40. The sections were bolted in three plates which in turn were bolted to the concrete of (he pit. Two men can remove the roof without great difficulty. The accepted tender was about £lOO,. but this...included, the excavations and roof as well as the concretmg. In the majority of .cases a .farmer would do-: his own excavation work and, provided he had the boxing; the concrete work would present, no. difficulty, so that a similar pit could be built at a much reduced cost.

MAKING THE ENSILAGE.

A start , was made with the . filling of the pit early in December. The procedure followed was for ope man to start mowing when the others? started milking in the morning and cut up till breakfast, time. After, the routine work had been completed a start would be made with the ensilage. One man would .operate the . sweep and he would work so that he would bring in a load from near the pit and then one. from much further afield. This gave the men at the pit. more time to .handle the ma.teria.L A second man., was'.stationed at. iiie top of .th,e pit and his duties were to pull thq sweep load to pieces and fork it into the ; pit. From, the top of the pit where, the sweep, left, the load it was .possible for , this man to feed the greqn material to the .builder and this saved .a further, map. in ~thq pit. The builder, receiving the material in small forkfuls was able to make a good job of filling the pjt and the material was evenly distributed and not in rolls as one sometimes sees it.

Careful building in the pit is just as essential as in the stack if good ensilage is to he made. The centre of the pit was kept high in building, and due attention .given to tho walls. Filling was commenced on. December 9 and continued on the 16th, 20th, 24th and 27th, and from 5 to 6 feet of material was put in on each occasion. When the last lot of green material was put in the mass was six feet above the top of the pit and it was nearly a fortnight before it had subsided sufficiently to get tho roof on. The top of the ensilage was not weighted in any way, although it is common practice to put about a foot of soil on as is done with ensilage stacks. The idea was to determine just how much ,waste would occur without any weight, and to get some idea as to whether the labour incurred in topping would be compensated for in the reduced waste that should occur. Taking everything into consideration the result of this trial proved that leaving the stack without any weight is not a payable proposition. The waste: on top averaged about six inches all over, which would represent about three tbns of ensilage, while to the depth of about

two feet the ensilage ranged from dark to light brown, which is of slightly inferior quality to the green. Below this depth the ensilage was of splendid quality, being almost as green as the day it was saved and slightly sour. To get some idea of the saving effected in the pit silo as against the stack method of conserving as regards labour, waste, etc., a stack was built in an adjacent paddock at the same time as the pit was being filled and all details of labour, etc., accurately kept. This stack was started on Deveember 14 and completed on December 23 after six days’ building. As against three men employed bn the pit it was necessary to have four 'men and a boy working on the stack, one on the sweep, one at the stack -bottom, two' on the stack and a boy to kad the horse of the hoist. The size of the stack' was 10 feet by 20. feet and it was six feet highwhen it had finally settled down. The estimated weight of ensilage in the stack was 50 tons as against 85 tons in the pit. The actual number of hours worked on the stack was 150 %while the filling of the pit occupied 125 hours. The boy’s labour for leading the horse was reckoned as half of that oL a man.

Basing the labour at 2s 6d per hour the cost of labour for the stack was £lB 16s 3d or 7s 6d per ton, as against £l5 12s 6d or 3s 6d per ton for the pit. The number of hours for the pit includes the time estimated for putting soil on, had this work been carried out. Assuming then that the stack contained the same as the pit, 85 tons, the total labour cost would then be £3l 17s 6d for the stack and £l5 12s 6d for the pit, or a saving'of £l6 os in favour of the pit. No allowance has beeii made for the extra horse that was required for the purpose of working tho hoist. The actual waste on the stack was a foot.deep on all walls and about one inch on the top ' This estimate of wall wastage is. on tlie conservative side. The wall wastage in the pit ’ would not exceed two inches and as we have reckoned in labour for topping in the ease of the pit it is only fair to assume that the wastage would have been the same as that of the stack. Reckoning the weight of ensilage at 451bs to the cubic foot wo find that the total waste in the case of the stack is 9 tons loewt or 19.5 per cent., while in the case' of the pit it is 3 tons Bcwt or 4 per cent. Again assuming that the stack contained 85 tons we could reckon the waste as 10’/ 2 tons as against 3 tons 6cwt for the pit. Putting the conservative value of £1 per ton on ensilage the value of waste in the case of the stack would be £l6 10s as against £3 8s in the pit, or a saving of £l3 2s in favour of the pit. Thus the saving in favour of the pit is £l6 5s for labour and £l3 2s for wastage, a total of £29 7s. As an off-set against this could be reckoned interest on the capital cost of the pit, say, £7 and depreciation, say, £2, leaving a nett saving of £2O 7s. Thus it will be . seen that. given a suitable site the construction of a pit is a very payable proposition. In addition to the actual saving of "£2O odd there must be reckoned the ease with which th? material is handled, the fact that building in the pit presents no very great difficulties and that once the 'ensilage is saved' it can be kept indefinitely in the pit.