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XtraBlatt issue 01-2016

  • Text
  • Krone
  • Machinery
  • Forage
  • Straw
  • Farmers
  • Agricultural
  • Menschen
  • Dairy
  • Maize
  • Contractor

MENSCHEN ON-FARM

MENSCHEN ON-FARM TECHNICAL ADJUSTMENTS With these reasons in mind, the idea of long chop maize was developed a decade ago together with the then feed adviser: “It made sense to chop longer and thus try to generate more structure out of the available maize when there was limited grass in the ration. We started at that time with a chop length of 16 mm and meantime have reached around 20 mm. We’ve tried out quite a lot and invested much time looking into different solutions. At first the machinery, especially the cracker, had to be adjusted because in order to chop long, the cracker has to be set very precisely.” Farm contractor Hamester from Mühlen- Eichsen does the entire maize harvest using only a disc cracker. “We achieve very good results in chop quality and kernel shredding. We’ve been working right from the start with Hamester and so were able to get our way concerning the longer chop. However, I can understand that the contractor was initially cautious when following special customer wishes and making the necessary changes to the machinery. Ideas suggested by farmers don’t always work out. In the case of long chop, however, we can report a positive balance after ten years”, concludes Hans-Peter Greve. REHEATING NO PROBLEM Bright and light-flooded: the new buildings at Milchhof Rodenwalde KG. Often identified as a problem with long forage maize harvest at Rodenwalde is chop maize silage is a tendency to reheat usually done with a single harvester and in the silo bunker. This hasn’t been the only occassionally another one brought case with Hans-Peter Greve. “We’ve got in. Contractor Hamester runs a BiG X 700 no problem with this because our feed removal rate is so big, with 50 t daily. We’ve the same time, it would be hectic at the and BiG X 850. If both were working at carried out compaction probes with clamp where, with a daily 80 ha harvested, more compacting vehicles would be Schaumann and these have indicated that the compaction with the long chop silage needed, says Hans-Peter Greve. “If we was not optimum in the upper layer because it hadn’t been rolled enough. For chop, two roller tractors or one large trac- follow our usual routine, even with long this reason, we seal the upper layer of the tor and a telescopic loader are sufficient silo bunker with a layer of shorter chop for compacting. However, for smaller silage. It’s just a case of doing our homework and rolling a bit more intensively on required feed removal rate. There, the silo farms it is more difficult to maintain the top. With this in mind, longer chop is no bunkers should be narrower to achieve a problem, although it certainly has to be more complete removal at the face.” The planned for in the silo filling routine.” The forage is cut out of the 20 m broad bun- 16

Everything in sight: The manager Hans-Peter Greve has all controls to hand. A part of the process is thorough control of feed quality. ker in the morning with the cutter grab: around 50 t maize and 20 t grass silage is prepared in the mixer-feeder trailer with the concentrate share and, depending on the ration, from 600 to 800 g straw per cow: “The straw content allows acceleration or slowing down of retention period. In total, our ration has 42 % dry matter. The feeding takes place with 13 tours, the first starting at 5.30 am with all 2,800 cattle fed by 9.30 am. “ LOOKING AHEAD The facilities at Rodenwalde were completely renewed in 2008. With an investment of around 6 million euros, the latest developments in this scale of dairy cattle housing were incorporated to improve animal comfort and labor productivity, says Hans-Peter Greve. “For us, the new buildings mean that labor productivity has been doubled compared with the old buildings.” Only a proportion of followers remain in the older buildings. Despite the current milk price, this will be changed before this year is out. “Currently we are building a new barn for 800 young cattle with completion planned this autumn.” INFO Incidentally, you can access a video on this report via the QR code or the link: krone.de/ xtrablatt-videos. In the end, out of good feed comes great milk. The parlor was – like the housing – new-built in 2008. 17