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Two choices when it comes to bags, the long bags that you put chopped silage in and the stretch film for round bale silage (either single or inline). Everything Ive read research wise on the single big bags (not the wrapped film but the individual bale bags is that you just cant get enough air out of them to make good silage). Horror stories, well my leg is one, lol. But there are a lot of them with uprights too. Theres a reason people arent building new uprights and using bags. You can buy bags and rent a bagger for less than half the annual interest on an upright. If you decide 10 years from now you dont want silage any more, with the bags, theres no annual cost. That silo is still sitting there depreciating. Yes, mud is a consideration. But the mud around an upright and feed bunk is one too. I used to rent a farm with uprights and the area down hill from where the feeder was became a money pit for rock (we used 80 to 100 tandem dump truck loads a year, in the days before geotextile fabric). With wet feed, you get wetter manure. The cows eat the same amount of dry matter and all that water goes somewhere. With all that said, I've wanted an upright. "Real farmers" grow corn, put it up, go out and start the unloader, and feed their stock. My banker says different, and he's right. I cant afford to do that. I can afford to rent a wrapper, and buy plastic film, and a skid loader has for me been the most useful thing on the farm. Plus, its paid for itself a dozen times doing custom work. As to crops, thats the other thing. I cant make corn pay. Tonnage wise, alfalfa (or red clover and orchard grass) will give me 2/3 the tonnage of much higher protein feed with no annual seed and planting costs. To do that consistantly, safely, means a glass lined silo or bagging. All it takes is one crop of too dry alfalfa going up into an upright and layering with a couple of crops of wet and you have a silo fire (very common here, esp long time corn silage people just getting into alfalfa silage).
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