Val and his wife Janette run Valley’s Silage Wrap from their property, ‘Jannali’, which straddles the Hume Highway just north of Holbrook in southern NSW. Val was born and bred over the road on the family property and still has two brothers in the area.
They bought this 400ha (1000 acre) property 22 years ago. Val reckons that it’s the pick of the country in this area. “Even so,” he says, “it’s just short of what you need to make a decent living without some sort of off-farm income.”
He was a shearer for 20 years, working six months of each year and still does a bit of shearing these days, mainly crutching and helping out the blokes in the area. Now they are flat out during the silage season that, for the past eight years, lasts from mid-September to early November, depending on the weather. Val says that they are usually so busy that they end up doing their own silage last.
The Kverneland UN7655 wrapper is powered by a 105hp John Deere 6400 and handles 3’ x 3’ and 4’ x 3’ bales, all six foot long. Val says that the bales are “a bit of everything ….. failed cereal crops and cereal crops planted for fodder, first-cut lucerne, ryegrass, clover/ryes and Silamax.”
The business focuses on the Holbrook district and up towards the north-east. In good years they have gone as far as Moree. They are well in demand, as contractors with large square bale wrappers are rare in this area.
Val and Janette have about 20 regular clients each year and about a quarter of them are cattle studs. “They find it easier to put a single large bale into the feeder. It saves opening up a 50 bale module, or opening up the silage pit.”
Valley’s Silage Wrap averages 5000 to 6000 bales a year. “Some years we’ve only wrapped about 3000 bales, and one year we did 8000.”
Val works in close collaboration with father and son neighbours, Greg and Glen Withers of Donna Valley Fodder, who run three Massey-Ferguson balers; two 4’ x 3’ and one 3’ x 3’ bale chambers. Keeping up with the balers is a tough job and means long hours during the silage season. “Put it this way,’ chips in Janet, “you don’t want to live with him then.”
Janette works a couple of days a week with Ag ‘N Vet in Holbrook and the rest of the time she’s the ‘domestic engineer’. She says that she’s a bit of everything come silage season – you get the impression that she is a huge back-up to Val.
The seasons are a-changing
“If the material that you’re wrapping is soft, everything’s good,” explains Val. “It takes a lot of planning to keep your customers satisfied.”
“Traditionally farmers have scheduled particular farm operations for particular times – but not any more. The seasons and situations have changed, so that you have to react differently these days. A heavy dew can put the wrapping back. We work on a maximum of 40% moisture, so that it holds better in the bale. With ryegrass and clover you can get away with a little bit more.”
“If an air bubble starts on the top of the bale, the crop is too green, so we suggest that we leave it for another half day.
“Last year was down a bit on what we normally do. The season shut down in spring with the hot winds in early September. In crops like triticale, the plants flowered and then shut down. The big heads didn’t fill. Most of the fellers around here decided to make silage or cut it for hay. If they let it go on they hardly got their seed back. A lot are now looking at grazing barley varieties.”
He helps out with the Withers’ Donna Valley Fodder when they are putting in pit silage, and also gets heavily involved in haymaking later in the season.
Do it right with Silotite
Val has used Silotite silage film for the last six years out of the eight that he’s been wrapping bales.
“It has a number of advantages that I really like; it’s more tacky on both sides and one benefit is that it has a bigger internal cylinder which means that it doesn’t over-run on the satellite. If it spins too fast it can heat up and tear and it won’t come off cleanly - that means stoppages and lost time.”
“I’m very particular about treating the film with care right from the time it’s picked up from Elders in Holbrook. We make sure that there are no blemishes or dents on the film, because that’s where problems start.”
Val has a good relationship with the Elders store and appreciates the good service. “We plan our purchases with Elders in late August and use about 8 to 10 pallets of Silotite per year. I always try to keep a pallet in front of what I need. They’ll unlock the place on weekends if we need it, and Janet will go in and pick up the pallet.”
Val covers each bale with six layers of film, which he says gives a better product. The mode of operation of the wrapper means that the bale ends get more plastic than the rest, which is better for carting and stacking.
“You’d hardly believe it, but the film pulls the bale in tighter than the twine does. Plastic has a memory, so the wrapper stretches it out, and when it gets on the bale it wants to return to its original size.”
“Some varieties of triticale have a hard crisp stalk, so it takes a bit more management with the plastic.”
“We have experimented with how long the plastic film would last on a wrapped bale left in the paddock. We had one wrapped with Silotite that lasted 5½ years. It was OK when it was opened. But it depends on the area and the weather – and you need to keep the bales away from trees. There’s a 4’ x 3’ x 6’ triticale bale on our place that’s been there for four years.
“We’ve had a real problem with cockatoos in the past, but we’ve worked out a solution. A local farmer lets us have some net wrap from the end of rolls. We run it over a line of bales with old tyres sitting on them. We stretch the net wrap tight over the top of the tyres, and secure each end. The first cockatoo that lands on the net gets caught and warns the others. So they all stay off.”
Val uses Tapex’s Plasback system to dispose of his waste plastic film. He has a couple of Plasback bins in the yard and takes them into the Wodonga Council’s recycling centre. The system hasn’t yet been taken up by the NSW councils closer to home.
53 per hour is tops
In a good paddock with good material Val says that he can wrap 40 bales an hour, including changing the rolls of film. “My record is 53 in one hour!”
A roll of Silotite covers twenty 3’ x 3’ x 6’bales and eighteen 4’ x 3’ x 6’ bales.
Val says that in the first five years of their contracting there was good money in wrapping, but not so much now. “Half the cost of doing the job is in the cost of the plastic and increased fuel costs and other running costs have added to it. In the last two years clients have quibbled over a 50c per bale increase – which doesn’t go anywhere towards covering the increases.”
Two-thirds of the contract wrapping is done ‘in the paddock’ where the crop was grown, cut and windrowed. One third is in lines of bales that have been moved to a more suitable location.
They run 170 Hereford-cross breeders, with 30 replacement heifers each year. Janette gets the job of feeding out the silage to their cattle and says that the 3’ x 3’ x 6’s are much easier to handle, dropping out the biscuits from the back of the ute.
They have only sowed about 50 hectares to crop this year, 10 of oats, which at the time of our visit in mid-July was coming up quite nicely, and 40 ha of triticale.
The rest of the property is mainly clovers and ryegrass pastures with native grasses, including red grass on the hill country.
Their plan is to super the flat country paddocks bi-annually but funds have made it a bit difficult in recent years.
An interesting facet is that the Billabong Creek runs through the property. According to the NSW Office of Water, Billabong Creek is the longest creek in the world, rising east of Holbrook and flowing in a generally easterly direction across the Riverina plain for about 320 kilometres before entering the Edward River at Moulamein.
Val says that the last time Billabong Creek flooded on their property was seventeen years ago, but it did so again in late February this year, so the season has been exceptionally good.
A lot of farmers around the area are becoming more aware of silage and Val believes that wrapped large squares are very convenient for his customers. “They are easy to transport, particularly on semi-trailers, and if you want to sell any excess, it’s like money in the bank.”
More information about Silotite film is available from Tapex Pty Ltd on (03) 9357 4866 or by visiting www.tapex.com.au