King of the clamp

Cheshire farmer Alan Winstanley took delivery of his second self-propelled feeder wagon in December. FMJ went along to see it in action to find out why Siloking machines have won out on this farm

WORDS AND IMAGES KEN TOPHAM

There are three important points to consider when you have 1,100 Holstein milkers to feed every day – reliability, efficiency and consistency. At Highfields Farm Limited, milking is carried out three times a day and feeding is done twice, with pre-mixes of ration also made at either end of the day. This means the multiple elements of the feed are loaded and mixed after feeding when the pressure is off, and attention to detail can be priority.

There’s no questioning the capital expenditure involved in operating a self-propelled machine on a farm the scale of Highfields, where there are 2,000 head of cattle in total – with dry cows and followers – most of which are fed using the Siloking.

There’s an argument that self-propelled feeders save on capital investment by negating the need for a loader and tractor to pull the wagon, but in reality how many dairy farms can manage without a loader? There are two used at Highfields Farm – both centre-pivots – and plenty of tractors too because the business takes care of most of its own field work, including silage making.

Alan Winstanley factored an estimate of 60% of a loader into his costings when making the comparison with a trailed machine, accepting that he still needs a loader. But, in real terms, 1,000 hours/year is saved on the loader, and probably the same on a tractor that would pull a trailed wagon, which would need to have a 30cub.m tub to match the output of the selfpropelled unit.

Premium trike

Previously, Highfields Farm owned a Siloking Premium 2215 with a 22cub.m tub. This was a trike model with a low-slung tub and narrowly set rear wheels. To say this machine served the farm well is an understatement; in three years it clocked 11,000 hours and mixed a total of 115,000t of feed. To help put that in perspective, there are only 26,300 hours in 36 months, so it did a lot of work!

This previous machine and the new Siloking SelfLine 500+ 2519-22 that replaced it have tubs fabricated from Silonox, a hard-wearing stainless-steel alloy. As well as