One-Man Silage Harvesting System

One-Man Silage Harvesting System HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Forage Handling 25-2-26 Ontario farmer Lloyd Armstrong runs a small cow calf, stocker operation. He uses rotational grazing in the summer and feeds grass silage and baled hay in winter. Silage is stored in a pit silo. Like many solo farmers, Armstrong needs to keep labor to a minimum. That's why he came up with a nifty system for hauling silage from field to farm. "I wanted to use a truck to haul silage but we had to find a way to fill it on-the-go in the field," says Armstrong. He mounted a dumping forage box on back of a 1-ton pickup and rigged up a tailgate that opens automatically when the box is dumped. Then he set out to find a way to tow the truck behind his forage chopper. What Armstrong did was to construct a towing frame using the front axle off a 4-ton truck. He made a cradle between the two wheels out of two pieces of 4-in. dia. pipe, spaced about 18 in. apart. This cradle holds the rear wheels of the forage truck about 4 in. off the ground. Two small ramps allow the truck to easily back into place on the dolley. Then the ramps are flipped up tight against the wheels and held in place by a chain with a simple lockup. When the forage truck is on the dolley,the steering wheel of the truck is kept from turning by a lock strap in the cab. When pulling the truck, it pulls like a wagon with the dolley being the steering unit. Once the truck box is full, Armstrong just drives it off the dolley and back to the bunk silo. "It lets me haul 10 to 14 loads back to the bunk silo in an afternoon, working alone," notes Armstrong, who put the system together last summer and has had no problems. "It's much faster than using a tractor to tow a wagon." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Lloyd Armstrong, Rt. 3, Sunderland, Ontario L0C 1H0 Canada).

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