# Forage Trends.



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Some behind the scene drivers in the forage industry. By Progressive Forage Growers Lynn Jaynes.

Regards, Mike

https://www.progressiveforage.com/blogs/editors-notes/behind-the-scenes-trends-driving-forage


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## Farmineer95 (Aug 11, 2014)

Blockchains? Could this be another way to manipulate?


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I see ourselves progressing away from technology and not towards it. This happened in the 1920's when rural electrification began and so everything was being electrified...and it got downright stupid on some of the most simple tasks then electrified.

Today a baler alone costs $44,000, but the margins to justify that via feeding livestock are just not there. Progressive Forage talks about farmers innovating for themselves, and I do that myself. I make my own equipment, but even for those that do not, I can see a reversal back to loose hay.

If it sounds crazy, consider what a baler does...compresses hay for storage. Back when buildings cost a lot of money, and balers were cheap; this made sense, but today, I can buy a cheap fabric barn and store loose hay for a lot less money then a $44,000 baler with a relatively finite lifespan. It will take better loose hay harvesting designs to get buy in from small to mid sized farmers, but I see it happening.

I watched a video where an overhead crane picks up loose hay, and rides along a monorail and drops it off in front of the cows. When I build my new barn, I am going to incorporate this into my barn design so that I will not have to start up my tractor from November to April and do everything by an overhead electric trolley. Mine will be much simpler then the depicted machine, and homemade, but all I am trying to do is get fat sheep as cheap as I can. Let's not overcomplicate farming here.

In short I think we have reached the tipping point.

Yes technology is great, but it has to be sustainable with the amount of money it saves. It does not matter if it is a combine or a clothes washer; it still has to work. This is why Whirlpool now makes a solid state clothes washer...no circuit boards...and I think it is a trend that will continue. I do not need a digital readout that tells me I have my clothes on delicate; I just need my wife's pantyhose cleaned! (yes she still wears them) It is the same thing with combines...they have to work, and farmers are getting sick of machines being down for 3 days because a computer board shorted out.

I predict the bigger equipment makers will not get it for quite awhile; they have a lot invested in technology, but the start-up companies will, and eventually make simple, uncomplicated products.

This too has happened. People scoffed once at Kubota Tractors and their small, simple design; but where I live, EVERYONE has one (including me).


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

It took me awhile to re-find this farming video, but it shows the overhead tractor that would allow a farmer to feed, clean up and bed their animals without starting up a tractor. It also shows how it could traverse into other buildings. I thought it was kind of cool, and looks easy to cobble together with a mini-excavator chasis with blown tracks, or a manlift chassis.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

I’m gonna wholeheartedly disagree. I cannot see any individual aside from the hobby farm homesteader going back to loose hay. There is a reason balers, tractors, etc cost what they do. It’s because they’re worth it. Feeding 2 cows with a pitchfork can be done, and will continue to be done long after I’m dead and gone, but anyone with any common sense is not going to wear themselves out to save a few dollars a year making loose hay. Then there’s the logistics of it. 2 tons of loose hay take up substantially more room than 2 tons of hay compressed into a bale, so that new hoop barn you just put up? Gonna have to put up another to store the same amount of hay you would in bales in a hoop barn.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

stack em up said:


> 2 tons of loose hay take up substantially more room than 2 tons of hay compressed into a bale, so that new hoop barn you just put up? Gonna have to put up another to store the same amount of hay you would in bales in a hoop barn.


But that is exactly my point; with the low cost of fabric barns, a person could put up 5 fabric barns for what a new hay baler costs, and the lifespan is very short compared to that of a building, even a fabric barn,

Ultimately I think this is the problem in the world today, and especially farming; we keep doing the same things over and over, just because that is how we have always done them.

A case in point is plowing snow. As a nation we spent billions on moving snow every year so we can drive and walk on bare earth. There is equipment, labor, salt, and even lawsuits from slips and falls, but today we have the technology to adapt trucks and cars to tracks an skis. I did the return on investment, and if my town quit plowing the roads, and bought inhabitants tracks for (2) vehicles per household, in less then 5 years we would have spent less on tracks and skis then on plowing roads. But it will never happen because people hate change, and the snowplow manufactures would lobby against it.

Myself, I would probably go with silage over loose hay because a bunker is pretty cheap to build, but if you view the video and that gantry tractor, the video shows it is pretty neat. I concur it is a glorified pitchfork, but it is hardly feeding two cows.

What I liked about it is its versatility. One machine that can bed, feed, and clean up a barn; any spot in the barn, then traverse from barn to barn by going outside, etc.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

RuttedField said:


> But that is exactly my point; with the low cost of fabric barns, a person could put up 5 fabric barns for what a new hay baler costs, and the lifespan is very short compared to that of a building, even a fabric barn,
> 
> The barn is for storing the baler is for gathering it up and putting in a pkg to handle
> 
> ...


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 14, 2015)

RuttedField said:


> A case in point is plowing snow. As a nation we spent billions on moving snow every year so we can drive and walk on bare earth. There is equipment, labor, salt, and even lawsuits from slips and falls, but today we have the technology to adapt trucks and cars to tracks an skis. I did the return on investment, and if my town quit plowing the roads, and bought inhabitants tracks for (2) vehicles per household, in less then 5 years we would have spent less on tracks and skis then on plowing roads. But it will never happen because people hate change, and the snowplow manufactures would lobby against it.


Ok let's say your town stops plowing and buys people tracked vehicles (not realistic).

What happens when this morning it was 40 and the roads were dry but at 5pm its 20 and 2 feet of snow? I drove to work on tires and now i can't get home?

What happens if you want to leave your snowy town and head to someplace without snow? Have to rent a car with tires when the snow runs out?

What happens in the spring when your 4` packed snow road starts to break apart and turns into 3` of wet mash potatoes like slush that is impassable?

Are the buildings and house built up 3` so that they can get their doors open when nothing is plowed or shoveled? Or will you shovel your porch then have steps to climb back up onto the snow road?

No one except for homestead small scale people will go back to loose hay. It is a logistical and labor nightmare.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

Or what happens if someone wants to visit your winter wonderland? You think they’re gonna rent a car with tracks to do so? No, they’ll go somewhere yet the roads are maintained.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

That is why it will never happen; no town will be the first to try it. However, if everyone did (across the snowbelt) it would not be an issue.

I do not see an issue with the other aspects though, mud, slush, what does it matter, the tracks today are driveon/drive off so swapping backand forth from snow to dry conditions is easy. And with a house, you just shovel a path to the car like always.

I am not saying it will happen, I am saying it should happen. The amount of money it would save taxpayers would be incredible!


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

RuttedField said:


> That is why it will never happen; no town will be the first to try it. However, if everyone did (across the snowbelt) it would not be an issue.
> 
> I do not see an issue with the other aspects though, mud, slush, what does it matter, the tracks today are driveon/drive off so swapping backand forth from snow to dry conditions is easy. And with a house, you just shovel a path to the car like always.
> 
> I am not saying it will happen, I am saying it should happen. The amount of money it would save taxpayers would be incredible!


going to put tracks on the semis also?Feed trucks?Milk haulers?Cross country semis hauling frt from non snow area?Hmmm there are 18,000 head of hogs hauled in to local plant here 6 days a week.Thats close to a 100 loads a day some coming from a couple hundred miles.Then the meat is all hauled out by semis coast to coast.That just one business in town I cant imagine the totals semis that go in and out of a typical farm town in the upper Midwest snow belt


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

You guys are probably right about the loose hay. That was a poor example for sure.

I still do not see a future long term for the hay baler though. The cost for one is just approaching the tipping point where something new will come along to replace it. To some degree silage has arrived, but unless the price of food drastically increases, the equipment costs incurred by farmers, along with their other costs, will not be enough to keep them in business. We are already seeing that now where many midsized farmers do not have the economy of scale to compete. To a large degree, the cost of equipment has something to do with that.

But that is how things evolve. It does not matter if it is a company, idea or type of equipment. It starts out as a new idea that provides a need, then it slowly improves until it is doing really well. Then the cost hits such a high price that a new idea, company or invention needs to come along to replace it. That typically means the company, idea or equipment cheapens itself to stay competitive. Ultimately the company, idea or equipment has to reinvent itself.

Now perhaps it is not loose hay, but I think the hay baler has hit the point where it has to cheapen itself so people continue to buy it (instead of some new feed harvesting method) to stay in the marketplace (and fend off the new method of feed harvesting), and then...because balers are unreliable equipment and the new method more reliable and getting better; reinvent itself.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

swmnhay said:


> going to put tracks on the semis also?Feed trucks?Milk haulers?Cross country semis hauling frt from non snow area?Hmmm there are 18,000 head of hogs hauled in to local plant here 6 days a week.Thats close to a 100 loads a day some coming from a couple hundred miles.Then the meat is all hauled out by semis coast to coast.That just one business in town I cant imagine the totals semis that go in and out of a typical farm town in the upper Midwest snow belt


Long haul trucking is a thing of the past. There is already a shortage of truck drivers in this country and it is predicted to get worse. With heavy regulation, and automation coming; young people are not interested in leaving home to work in a dying industry overall. Trucks are too expensive per mile for what they haul...labor, tires, fuel, etc...

Everything is new again is a true statement and ultimately railroads will be making a comeback. They simply have too as they are so efficient...I know, I worked for them for years. But their efficiency comes in intermodal and same-freight, so you will see short-haul trucks utilizing intermodal facilities more and more. That would mean these short haul trucks could use tracks or high flotation tires to get around on snow-roads. Just as the conex shipping container revolutionized transportation, the lack of drivers and inefficiency of trucks is going to force more and more shapes of shipping containers so that more stuff can be moved. Think liquid goods that can be stacked like shipping containers because they have the same outside dimensions and interlocking ability.

The world does not exist in a vacuum; when one industry dies off, another takes over. An example of this was the huge kerosene industry that vaporized when Edison invented the electric light bulb. If the many, many companies that made snowplows converted to making tracks and high flotation tires, the cost for track systems, would go down. Ultimately more ideas are brought to market, and the energy increases.

But it takes people thinking outside the box to envision it.

It has taken a long time for electric cars to get here, especially Maine, but they are arriving in droves now.


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 14, 2015)

You mention silage as a cheaper alternative to a hay baler. Have you priced a chopper, chopper boxes, silage pit, packing tractor, plastic???

As for not plowing roads that is just a wild idea. You mention "across the snowbelt" what happens when you travel in and out of the snowbelts as many people do daily? I've never seen "drive on/off" tracks that can traverse deep snow or hold up to use and abuse. All of tracks that hold up long term replace the wheels entirely. Have you ever maintained a set of vehicle tracks? (Plastic slides, bogie wheels, bearings, tracks). Can plow a lot of snow and buy a lot of tires for what that stuff costs.

Every been on a snowmobile trail in April when it's 70 degrees with 4 feet of "snow" under you. No way a normal vehicle with tracks is going down it. Your lucky to get down it with a snowmobile or piston bully tracked groomer. No way that is acceptable on a 65mile ride to the hospitalk in an emergency.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Everyone could drive these at $75,000 each.Go about 25 mph max.

I put one on my Christmas list but it hasn't showed up yet


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

I've got tracks for my ranger. Same concept as the ones made for larger pickups. They are awesome for the ability to go where ever you want within reason. You wouldn't want to drive across snow covered cattails as eventually you'd fall in and get stuck badly. Most places that you get stuck, you just back up and take another route. Their downside is rough ride on hard surfaces compared to tires, maintance isn't to bad on mine yet but eventually all the bearings and bogey wheels will need to be replaced. You also lose alot of turning radius and speed.

I wouldn't want them to quit plowing snow here as it doesn't always just fall straight down. here we get wind that blows snow leaving drifts. Drifts get hard as concrete when its -20. Would be a rough ride down alot of roads here. Also some really huge drifts as well. I couldn't imagine the mess when all that unplowed snow started melting. Tracks or no tracks no one would be able to drive them roads until it finished melting.


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

swmnhay said:


> Everyone could drive these at $75,000 each.Go about 25 mph max.
> 
> I put one on my Christmas list but it hasn't showed up yet


you bought a ranger right? Cab with heat? put tracks on it. I know its not quite the same but its a good compromise.


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 14, 2015)

My neighbor has an S10 blazer with tracks on it. It's a neat toy and will go places but you wouldn't want to cruise in it 65 miles to Walmart unless you were making a weekend trip of it. Can't even imagine the 500 mile trip to visit my parents.

At 40mph (about top speed) that thing feels like your going 200. Can only imagine them on an ambulance viberating along while the paramedic is trying to insert an IV haha. Also at high speeds the tracks and undercarriage wears quick.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

chevytaHOE5674 said:


> You mention silage as a cheaper alternative to a hay baler. Have you priced a chopper, chopper boxes, silage pit, packing tractor, plastic???
> 
> As for not plowing roads that is just a wild idea. You mention "across the snowbelt" what happens when you travel in and out of the snowbelts as many people do daily? I've never seen "drive on/off" tracks that can traverse deep snow or hold up to use and abuse. All of tracks that hold up long term replace the wheels entirely. Have you ever maintained a set of vehicle tracks? (Plastic slides, bogie wheels, bearings, tracks). Can plow a lot of snow and buy a lot of tires for what that stuff costs.
> 
> Every been on a snowmobile trail in April when it's 70 degrees with 4 feet of "snow" under you. No way a normal vehicle with tracks is going down it. Your lucky to get down it with a snowmobile or piston bully tracked groomer. No way that is acceptable on a 65mile ride to the hospitalk in an emergency.


I concur with some of that, BUT you are making predictions about the future based on current offerings.

IF...a HUGE IF...there was a shift in thinking, that instead of fighting nature, we used technology to work with it, then new ideas would come to the table.

Take for instance bogie wheels and slides, I love snowmobiling so I know what all that entails, BUT the world does not work in a vacuum, when there is a needs, say in this case a better track system, if there is a need, a imaginative person will eventually devise it.

Forward thinkers do not say "x cannot be done", they say, "how to we facilitate change."

I got into very big trouble when I told the plant where I welded up snowplows that "I thought it was absolutely stupid to scrape snow off the ground just to drive on when we had sent people to the moon". They got mad because there was a lot of truth to it.

My statement I stand behind.

Certainly on the eve of 2019 we can quit pushing snow, killing people on icy roadways, polluting our streams, rivers and lakes with salt, and find a better way from point a to point b!


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

RuttedField said:


> I concur with some of that, BUT you are making predictions about the future based on current offerings.
> 
> IF...a HUGE IF...there was a shift in thinking, that instead of fighting nature, we used technology to work with it, then new ideas would come to the table.
> 
> ...


If everyone ran track vehicles leaving the snow and driving over it after awhile in gets rougher and rougher like speed bumps so bad you wouldn't be able to go 10 mph.So instead of plowing the roads they would have to be groomed if you wanted to get anywhere in a decent amount of time.So instead of plowing it would need to be groomed.Go to Yellowstone and they groom it daily all winter where they don't plow the snow and it is snowmobile or track traffic all winter.


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 14, 2015)

Yep we groom our snowmobile trails daily and during heavy snow and traffic twice daily. When a groomer goes down within 24 hours of heavy traffic the trails are so rough you can't drive over 25mph without losing your teeth. Difference being if the trails are rough you stay home, if the road are rough and impassable and I need to go to work, school, store, hospital, etc then how's that going to work? Going to invent self leveling/ grooming snow?

So what advance do you see in silage that will transport forage from the field to storage with minimal labor? Self mowing grass? Self driving wagons? Air tight vacuum silage pit???

It all sounds good in paper but there is a lot of logistics that are impractical.

I'm sure things will change. But I guarantee in my last 60 years of life I'll still be plowing snow and baling hay.


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

swmnhay said:


> If everyone ran track vehicles leaving the snow and driving over it after awhile in gets rougher and rougher like speed bumps so bad you wouldn't be able to go 10 mph.So instead of plowing the roads they would have to be groomed if you wanted to get anywhere in a decent amount of time.So instead of plowing it would need to be groomed.Go to Yellowstone and they groom it daily all winter where they don't plow the snow and it is snowmobile or track traffic all winter.


Even daily 'groomed' trails can be a rough SOB here in Michigan, especially just coming out of a tight turn or stopping point. Seems these newer snowmobiles can only be ran at an idle or wide open for some odd reason. 

I can't imagine what roads would be like, with packed down snow/ice. Especially, in during the spring thaw/freezing period, I know how bad my unplowed lane gets and I can stay off it until it finishes melting.

Larry


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 14, 2015)

It's very common for us to freeze roads up for logging. Take a dozer and keep the snow packed down and smooth until it's hard enough to drive a 200,000 lbs log truck on. But once it warms up in the spring and it's melting you can hardly walk on them with snowshoes as its a 3' thick sloppy mess of slush.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

RuttedField said:


> That is why it will never happen; no town will be the first to try it. However, if everyone did (across the snowbelt) it would not be an issue.
> 
> I do not see an issue with the other aspects though, mud, slush, what does it matter, the tracks today are driveon/drive off so swapping backand forth from snow to dry conditions is easy. And with a house, you just shovel a path to the car like always.
> 
> I am not saying it will happen, I am saying it should happen. The amount of money it would save taxpayers would be incredible!


You don't see an issue with anything you're saying should be done? No community in their right minds would tell the citizens they're gonna stop plowing snow. What you're proposing is astronomically ludicrous. Instead of not plowing snow, why don't we just buy shit tons of propane heaters, melt the snow, then use it for drinking water? Save much more money than people digging wells. How's that for forward thinking?


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

stack em up said:


> melt the snow, then use it for drinking water? Save much more money than people digging wells.


Perhaps even better, bottle the water (call it 'organic' maybe) and sell it to them. 

I'd better stop before I look to far ahead of myself that I can't see my shadow anymore. 

Larry


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## kurt1981 (Apr 18, 2017)

the trend for production ag. is going to huge farms to pay for all this stuff. I think she is talking more about subsistance farming. You have to have enough acres to justify the cost. With my 25 cows there is never enough money to justify a new piece of machinery if i want to build wealth. But if i just want to blow all my calf profits on farm equipment, that is an optiion too...hence my day job. Last fall my steer cattle weighed 905 bringing 1.60 true yearlings. You can buy stuff if you raised a couple hundred of those. If you want to put up loose hay and just shut down the economy when it snows just join the amish. There is no reason to bash technology or American innovation because you cant afford a 44000 dollar hay baler for your 3 cows. MAGA


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

RuttedField said:


> I see ourselves progressing away from technology and not towards it. This happened in the 1920's when rural electrification began and so everything was being electrified...and it got downright stupid on some of the most simple tasks then electrified.
> 
> Today a baler alone costs $44,000, but the margins to justify that via feeding livestock are just not there. Progressive Forage talks about farmers innovating for themselves, and I do that myself. I make my own equipment, but even for those that do not, I can see a reversal back to loose hay.
> 
> ...


There was an article in Farm Show magazine awhile back where this guy in Florida, a small farmer "poor boy"-ing it, was trying to put up hay for his cattle. He had had an old baler, but it died and he didn't have money for a new one, and what he could afford was basically worn out "junk" anyway, and hard to keep running reliably. He was kind of in a quandary and wasn't sure what to do. Buying hay was prohibitively expensive, so he needed a solution.

SO, he bought a used flail silage chopper for nearly nothing. He cuts his hay normally, allows it to dry, rakes it, cures it in the windrow just like he was gonna bale it, then instead of baling the dry hay he chops it with the flail chopper and blows it into a trailer. At first he started out with some old cotton trailers or something and tarped them, for the first year he did it (IIRC) but the next year he got his hands on some old mobile home frames, so he cut them down into manageable length trailers, and floored them and built some walls with widely spaced studs and hinged doors at the bottom which raised up for feeding. Then he put a tin roof over the top of the trailers to shed water. The trailers had a large wide opening door that folded down in the front, so that the silage chopper could blow the chopped hay into the trailer, filling it from back to front like a silage wagon. Since it's dry hay, though, it's much lighter than silage would be. He could chop a field of dry hay, blow it into the trailer, filling it up, close the door, and park it out of the way, and store the hay in the trailer until needed.

For feeding, he pulled the trailer out into the pasture where the cows are, then opens the small doors along the bottoms of the outer walls the length of the trailer, one by one. The cattle can then eat from the trailer as needed. The hay drops down until there's nothing left in that section, and the cows reach in and eat to the middle. Then he simply opens the next door. This allows "gradual feeding" and prevents excess waste. Using several trailers capable of putting up the amount of hay he needs, the trailers only cost a few hundred dollars a piece to build, out of scrap materials, and they act as "barns" to store the hay during the year, keeping the hay clean and dry until it's fed out. No need to move and stack bales, load and unload, cut twine or wrap and feed the bales, buy (and then have to dispose of) expensive twine or wrap, etc.

So, where there's a will, there's a way... OF course such a system wouldn't be viable for everybody, but for smaller guys, feeding their own livestock and not selling hay, it's a sensible system that works...

Later! OL J R


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## Aaroncboo (Sep 21, 2014)

That's what I was thinking of doing to limit waste with my sheep. Seems like it would work but you'd have to have a longer chute to keep it from blowing anywhere but into the trailer.


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