Silo question (woodvue?)

I saw Woodvue's post and pictures on the thread about silos vs. bags/bunkers. Just curious about how the poured concrete silos works... Does it unload from the top or bottom? Are there doors and ladders?
How does the feed get from the silo to the cows? maybe a long trough and rubber belting to distribute? or a loader bucket scoops it away?

Thanks in advance!

With a silage fork , from the top, down the chute, then carry it on same silage fork to the cows. Few years ago of course.

Pete, same here when I was growing up at the home farm with the cows the silo was at north end of barn and in mid winter the
silage would be frozen a foot thick to the walls of the silo. Required a lot of chopping with an axe to get the next door out of
the silo. We would fork it down into a cart then push the cart along to feed the cows. At the other farm with the young cattle the
silo was on the side of the barn and the cattle faced the silo. One person would be in the silo forking silage down and another
feeding into the manger. Dad bought a Patz top mounted silo unloader in the late 1960s for the cow barn. Then for the younger
cattle start blowing silage into a pile and feeding with tractor and FEL into outside feeders.

JimB

most poured silos here have bottom unloader, with a tapered belt that lets silage out as it progresses out to feed bunks

Poured concrete silos can be top unload or bottom unload. As Pete said, top unload was originally with a fork you climbed the silo, forked it out into a cart, and forked out of the cart to the cows, or piled it up in the silo room and forked it unto a wheelbarrow. The early silo unloaders were pretty sorry pieces of equipment. You were almost as far ahead to fork it out by hand. Especially after a couple of year of wear and tear on the unloaders. Later top unloaders were much better, but reliable lifespan was relatively short because of the high acid silage tended to rust and eat the unloader up. Hand pulled carts and wheelbarrows gave way to self propelled feed carts and belt or chain type around the barn feeders in later years. Later concrete poured silos were bottom unloaders in the same tradition as the Blue Angels.

Used to be a big deal (and bragging rights) with us farm kids about how fast we could unload forage wagons at the silo. The early silo filing blowers were usually around 48 inches in diameter. Took 15 to 20 minutes to unload a wagon. As time went on the blowers got larger and the tractors hooked to them got bigger and unload times went down to the two to three minute range.

The Ag class conversations went like: We got an IH 56 blower and a 706 running it and we can unload a load of corn in 4 minutes!" next kid: Big deal! We have a clover 60 inch blower with a turbo'ed 4010 and we can unload in 3 minutes!" Next kid: So what? Pop just bought one of those JD 72 inch 1,000 rpm blowers and we have a 4320 on it and we can put a load over the top in 2 minutes 20 seconds, so there!" At which point everybody else was suitably impressed. It made for some fun conversations.

I remember a story told to me a guy who
bought a poured cement silo . They poured
so much a day and the first day they came
early and naturally the farmer invited them
in for breakfast. Big mistake they always
showed up for breakfast and it took a long
time to pour that silo.

As a farm teenager I was the silo unloader. That is my trusty silage fork and myself. Threw silage down
the outside shute. Dad used tractor loader from there to cattle bunks. 2 silos. One 16' across and the
other 18'. Both 50' tall. Dad purchased a silo unloader after I left home. OH for the good ole days.

The trench silo didn't save us any time. We had to
use silage forks to load it into the pickup because
the tractor would waste some. Then it was time to
back up to the bunks and unload it by hand. When it
was really muddy we used the loader tractor to feed
and we still had to fork it into the bucket. I
remember thinking often that we were a bunch of
fools.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I love the smell of
sedan silage.

Thank you to everyone for your responses. I appreciate them and the stories.
Pete's story sure sounds like hard labor! Yet, a good labor - feeding the cows that feed your family. A personal connection to the provision.
I wouldn't want to chip frozen silage off the walls! The sun's rays must have lead to some crooked unloaders.
I work in a building that used to house the A.O. Smith company - they built silo unloaders under our roof. I'm sure it could tell stories.

Donald's story sounds familiar. I was always the low man because my dad hobby farmed beef. One tractor, no silos. My best friend's dad had a 65-cow dairy with a GIANT 1066 International with duals and a cab!! They had two silos, both had blowers but we forked it to the cows out of wheelbarrows.

So now I'm curious. How does a bottom unloader work? Wouldn't the silage just pile up tight and "bridge" over? How do you claw it outta there? That's a lot of weight with all the material up above...!

The story I heard is the unloader was
developed from coal mining equipment.

There are a couple different kinds of bottom unloaders, one is the Harverstore, (well they have a few more). The
Harverstore unloaders are like a big chainsaw blade going around inside, then there is the Laidig in the stave silos
and some poured concrete silos, they use an auger with several teeth on them, there is a track bolted to the floor on
the edge of the silo for the unloader to run on. In the hopper on the Laidig is several gearboxes some drive the sweep
arm and some run the auger. When filling the silo you need to run it some so it does not settle down to tight on it or
it is hard on it to get it going. Here is a pic of the track, I had to put a new shoe on the end of the sweep arm along
with a new drive sprocket, it drives on the track to push the arm forward, at a pace of a foot in 10 minutes or so.

First two pics are from 1952, folks built a new dairy barn, silo was a 14x30, removed the roof and upper end, and was enclosed by the new barn. Hay was left around the silo til Spring, so only frozen silage was next to the barn"s outside wall. Late, 1962, added a 16x40 and HM bunk feeder. Everything got crunched a couple of years ago by the current owner.

There were a lot of poured silos around here and untill this post I never heard of anything except top unload, never a bottom unload.

Thanks Brown Swiss. I kindof get it now. I think I'd have to see one in person to fully understand how it works.