NOBODY at this stage knows if the 2009 silage season will be an easy run with drying winds and plenty of sunshine, but the lesson from last year’s wet and difficult weather is to be prepared for the worst with plenty of capacity available to clear a big acreage quickly.

For many farmers with silage to make, justifying the high-output machinery is only part of the problem. The other difficulty is providing the manpower to cope with the peak workload. This is one reason why so many farmers have handed silage work over to a contractor.

Contractors are likely to have the workload that can justify big, expensive machinery such as a self-propelled forage harvester or a baler/wrapper combination, plus the labour force needed to operate a high-output harvesting system.

Forage baling plays an important part in Robert Cutting’s contracting business based at Barham, Ipswich. Last year his John Deere 678 baler and wrapper combination dealt with most of the 12,500 silage and haylage bales he made, but he also runs a Claas 280 round baler that is used mainly for making 5,000 bales of straw and 1,000 of hay, and it also helps out with the silage baling.

Other equipment purchased to boost the work rates includes a wide rake for putting two swaths into one in order to provide a bigger intake for the balers, and he also runs a front- and rear-mounted mower combination to increase the cutting rate.

Sales of front and rear combinations, with two or three mowers or mower-conditioner units, are increasing according to LandMec Pöttinger. Nearly all the demand comes from contractors or from farmers who also do contract mowing for neighbours. Many of the more successful contractors are taking on more silage work, and this increases the pressure to invest in high output equipment, the company says.

Pöttinger claims to be the biggest manufacturer of front- and rear-mounted mowers, offering a choice of cutting widths from 7.3-13m wide. Options include the recently introduced NovaCat V10 featuring a hydraulic adjustment to vary the overall cutting width between 8.7m and 9.98m, useful to reduce the risk of striping when cutting round corners and to adjust the width to suit the crop conditions.

Claas is also responding to the growth market for wider mowers by adding four new triple-mower sets to its Disco Contour range for the 2009 season. The new models, offering cutting widths up to 9.10m for the Disco 9300 Contour triple with a 170hp minimum power requirement, are fitted with the new Claas P-Cut cutterbar, which is said to give a cleaner, more even cut with better contour following.

Three Splendimo mower units, each with a 3.2m working width, are combined to form the Triplo three-unit mowing combination from Lely UK. Recommended tractor size is 150hp plus, and a special feature of the Splendimo range is the patented drive system from the gearbox to the cutting discs. It uses flexible hexagonal steel shafts to deliver the power, an arrangement that is said to reduce energy losses due to friction, using 15-20% less power than a conventional drive system.

For those who make big square bales of hay, Baler’s Choice automatic preservative application system from the Profitable Farming Company is said to offer an effective way to avoid dust and mould formation and reduce heating risks as well. Last year’s wet harvest also encouraged many farmers to use the preservative on straw bales, the Devon-based company says, achieving similar benefits.

The Profitable Farming Company’s newest development is an extension to the preservative application system that is used to attach a data tag to one of the strings on each bale. The tags record information such as the date and time the bale was made, the field name, the bale’s weight plus average and maximum moisture content of the bales material.

In spite of the success of baled silage, most of the UK grass crop is still stored in clamps. One of the advantages of these is that when they are properly built they can have a long life with comparatively little maintenance, but when they eventually need rebuilding – or in some cases extending to cope with herd expansion – Suffolk-based Poundfield Products provides concrete products to build new walls.

The company’s wide range of concrete products includes unique pre-stressed L-blocs or wall sections that contain steel reinforcement. These are lighter than conventional blocks and easier to install, and they also have a special tongued and grooved interlocking system for extra strength. They are available in a wide range of sizes to suit silage clamps and other applications including grain storage.

Another option for silage storage is the Ag-Bag system, originally developed in Germany but now adopted in a long list of countries including the United States. In the UK it is distributed by Devon-based Ag-Bag Systems.

The Ag-Bag storage container is a large, sausage-shaped plastic bag that is sealed when it has been filled. According to independent American research, wastage is typically less in an Ag-Bag than in a clamp, while feed quality is usually higher. Initial costs are lower than installing a new clamp and there is also a gain in flexibility as the silage from second or third cuts can be stored in separate bags, avoiding the wastage that can occur when re-opening a clamp.

The price of fertiliser has moved down from last year’s peak levels, but it remains one of the major costs for growing grass to produce silage and hay crops. There is nothing new about the idea of using the nutrients in farmyard manure and slurry as a fertiliser replacement, but Oliver Arnold of the Spring Farm Partnership is offering a new spreading service that takes away the guesswork.

Mr Arnold, who runs a contracting service based on his 1,100-acre farm near Norwich, has invested in a Challenger TerraGator to carry a Tebbe manure spreader. An unusual feature of the Tebbe is that it records the weight of manure spread in each field, and combining this with an N, P and K analysis for the manure will allow customers to calculate the amount of fertiliser they need to spread in order to provide the target nutrient application.