Silage cut in south west Ireland in June 2010 YouTube - Ronnie Lenihan 2010
Pretty cool vidio Grass Hopper.Looks like a top notch operation:thumbsup I noticed hydraulic cylinders on the sides of the rake on the Volvol loader .I couldent tell from the vidio what they are for.
yup ! pretty cool video, self propelled is deffinatly getting to be the way to go these days I noticed it seems that the roads there where you are driving seem pretty narrow for the size of equipment you are running, do you have much trouble with drivers in other vehicles cutting you off? or in general not taking into consideration the difficulty of operating the equipment through town? All in all I agree top notch operation!
The Rams are for folding the buckrake (as its called) up for transport, a few of my customers have similair rakes on there volvo loaders i think 16' when open!
As CTS explained the rake folds to within the machines width for transport. The rake in the video is a 12ft but 14ft are the most common size in Ireland with a few choosing the massive 16ft but very few loaders can handle it when dealing with wet grass.
The roads are a constant struggle here when moving equipment but to be fair when on the really narrow country roads the motorists we meet expect to encounter large machinery during the summer and for the most part are very accomodating but when on the larger national roads quite often we meet people who think machines should never leave the field
I take it you work for POD?? Are you based in Dublin or Cork or is there a Galway depot
Stop me when this gets boring This is the crew I work for operating in a less than ideal farm yard ointhead YouTube - Eddie Walsh:Volvo L110F
The Volvo loader is pretty agile in tight quarters ,I also got to see the folding fork setup in the last vidio.Do you let the hay cure very long after It's cut or do you go in with the chopper rite behind the mower?
Unfortunetly changeable weather means the chopper is never more than a day behind the mower and very often they are working in the same field. Not great for silage quality but sometimes getting it mowed down when its dry is as good as it gets in rainy Ireland
Yup,we sure cant controll the weather Grass Hopper.Our weather & tempature is allot different in my area.The reason I was asking about curing time is that Back in the mid 1950's Allis-Chalmers offerd a direct cut forage chopper.My Grandfather had one and they would pile it up in a trench silo similiar to what you fellers are doing,But according to my dad The direct cut method was somwhat of a disaster in our case.It was to wet & ended up with more spoilage on top then we like to see.I dident know if you ever had any trouble like that.Do you cover the pile with anything when finnished?
The pile or pit as we call it is covered in a heavy gauge sheet of polythene,sometimes 2 sheets to keep it airtight,then old car/truck tyres are put on top both to compress the top layer of silage and anchor the plastic from high winds
Grass Hopper, Are these custom operators as opposed to farmer owned equipment?
Yes all custom operators,farmers tend to run trailed choppers with some larger operators running older self propelled units,typically 10years+ old. A good acreage for larger contracting grass silage crews is 4-5000 acres/year. The operators in both videos above would be cutting approx 2,500acres each per year
been watching with some amazement at the tight quarters you guys get to work in..... and can clearly see now why you need to fold up the buck rake. anyhow, good post indeed!
I used to work for POD, in there Portadown depot up here in the north, and yea they have a depot near Galway aswell, Im out on my own now still work on a good few Volvo, aswell as all others! Your right the boy that i do work for have 14' buckrakes not the 16' ones!
i like thoses volvo machinery
Excellent video The harvesting guys here run a very simaliar operation and gets a few guys from Ireland to help him