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This year, straw is a very valuable commodity due to the reduction in cereal acreage cross Ireland and the mixed weather of the past few months. Getting baled what was available was difficult, not to mind sourcing it.
Anyone bedding cows on straw has to minimise waste and maximise what they do with the straw they use to keep costs under control.
JJ Ahern is only too aware of this.
He is an organic farmer in east Cork producing milk for Glenisk and organic oats for Flahavans in Waterford. He also keeps some of the oats for home use.
One of the stipulations in organic farming is not being allowed to use chemical fertiliser on his land. All the crops JJ produces, including grass, can only receive additional nutrition by means of organic material such as dung or slurry, which limits how he can grow more grass.
Ironically this is one of the big advantages JJ has.
His 200 dairy cows are housed on straw during the winter months which produce a lot of dung. It is even more reason why he needs to make best use of his straw bales. This dung is his fertiliser so it is a very important resource in terms of getting grass and other crops to grow.
“We treat this as a valuable commodity on our farm as it helps grow the grass for the cows and the oats we sell for a premium price”.
Bedding
So why invest in a straw blower then?
“There’s a lot of work in 200 cows and any tool that can make the daily routine easier during the housing period helps.
"We bed our cows twice a day after each milking to keep them clean. To aid this, we clean out the shed every Tuesday. It would take a lot of work if we didn’t have the straw-blower. The advantage with this machine is we don’t have to drive into the shed so the cows can be bedded from outside the feed barrier. Anything that increases cow comfort is worth spending money on as it increases milk output from the cows”.
I asked JJ why not just install cubicles with mats and eliminate one less input from the equation.
“I could do that but then I would have to buy in organic fertiliser in one form or another. Plus, our housing is set up for straw bedding and I don’t have to clean cubicles every day.
“Our cows have plenty of room and we can drive the tractor and straw-blower around the shed. I have been using a straw-blower for a number of years now and I am happy with the system.
“We have very few cases of environmental mastitis and most importantly of all the cows are happy. In my experience, happy cows produce more milk.”
When it comes to spreading the dung, JJ said the contractor finds it spreads more evenly.
“The dung falls apart easily, which makes the job of spreading it accurately simpler for the contractor. For me, this means more even crops.”
Dual-purpose
The straw spreader JJ is using is a trailed Teagle 8500. It is a dual-purpose machine which can feed baled or pit silage similar to a diet feeder or it can blow straw up to approximately 25m through the hydraulically adjustable 280° spout.
Power from the PTO drives the large-diameter fan for blowing the material out and the cross beater which separates the straw before it is fed into the fan. The hydraulically driven floor chain can be sped up or slowed down depending on individual requirements.
The bed chain has slats attached which draw material towards the cross beater. The machine can have a bale dropped into it with a loader or the hydraulic tailboard can be used.
The operator can control this from the cab or the nearside rear of the machine through a clever safety switch that requires both hands for operation. This is useful for when net or twine has to be removed from the bale. Capacity is 4.5m3 or two round bales. JJ is using large square bales which fit neatly into the machine.
“I use 500 8x4x3 bales every year. Straw is another expense on the farm and I want to make sure I make the best use of it.”
Oil flow required is a modest 35l/min and a 60hp tractor should easily handle the machine. On the day we visited, Frank Byrne from Teagle demonstrated the machine and it was more than able to spread the straw across the lean-to shed. Spread was even and the shed was bedded in a matter of minutes.
If there was anything to be concerned about with this machine it is the presence of a foreign object such as a stone that could become a harmful projectile given the machine’s power to spread across a wide area.
Prices start from €19,800 including VAT.
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