Baggin', Baggin, Baggin'....

... keep that bagger baggin'!  Baggin', baggin', baggiiiiiin.....Its feeeeeed!  (Sung to the tune of "Rawhide".)

A few weeks ago, I blogged about mowing, chopping and storing hay in the silo. This post is about another way that haylage (chopped hay) can be stored for an extended period of time, two years if need be.  Its called an AgBag and I'll do my best to explain how it works.

Once the hay is mowed and chopped into the wagons (you can scroll down to the bottom of the blog and continue to hit "older post" until you get to the blog about mowing and chopping if you missed that one; it shouldn't be too many posts away since it was fairly recent), it is brought onto the yard where the AgBag is located.  An AgBag is just that: an agricultural bag made from very durable, weatherproof plastic used for storing feed.  The AgBag is attached to the bagger.

The bagger has a conveyor (the blue thing you see here) that carries the chopped hay from the load out from the wagon up and into a rotor.  The rotor is a rotating mechanism that has "fingers" that pushes the hay out the back of the bagger and into the bag.  The hay gets super compacted and air tight so that spoilage won't occur.



A little closer look at the conveyor.  The black hoses you see are hydraulic hoses that run the hydraulic motor for the conveyor.  The PTO from the tractor runs the rotor.




The bag is hooked onto the bagger where ever the farmer wants the end of his 200 foot bag to be for the next however long it takes to feed all the hay.  Then, the tractor is left in neutral.  As the haylage compacts into the bag and the bag fills up, the tractor is pushed along in front.




This is the cable.  The cable holds the backstop at the end of the bag.  Once there is a certain amount of pressure on the cable, the tractor and bagger inches forward.  The cable mechanism allows the hay to be compacted as much as possible, taking out all the oxygen and starting the fermentation process.  The hay ferments just like in the silo.  When the bag is full, the cable is released and winched back up, the backstop removed, the tail tucked under and all the farmer has to do is wait for those cold, cold snowy Iowa days to start feeding from the bag.




There ya go.  Two hundred (give or take) feet of cow chow. 
(That's about two hundred TONS, by the way!)




We were helping a neighbor out with his hay when I took these pictures.  It was a very hot, humid day with a high of 96 with heat indexes reaching 110+.  The kids did pretty good with the heat, but they got a little tired when the menfolk were wrapping things up and planning how to get everything back to where everything belongs.  So, we got out the chairs we keep in the trunk for just such an occasion and found some shade with a breeze on the cool side of a silage wagon.  Between the Frisbee and the chairs, they were entertained a good 15 minutes...my kids are so easy :-)