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Faunsdale, AL | We empty about 6000 tons of corn silage from 9 silos every year with 2 or 3 Patz surface drive unloaders. Maybe it's the devil I know rather than the one I don't know, but I'm comfortable with them. Just found 3 complete used ones and some spare parts to pick through at a neighbors for 2x scrap price. Wouldn't have worried about getting them, but had 2 unloaders crushed in silos that were "topped" by a tornado last April, so our spare parts have been severely depleted!
Haven't done any haylage in years, last time we did it, there was a small/speed up pulley that we installled on the blower. Alfalfa haylage can be sticky. The Patz will dig it up just fine, it's just blowing it out that's difficult. Pats has a larger blower available now that will fit right in any of their unloaders as far as I know. We have only one big one and use it on our 30' silo, the rest are their standard blowers used in 20 and 24' silos. Wish we had had one of those back when we had the haylage. Planning to make some triticale silage this spring in a 24x70, so we'll see.
One thing we do is to move the unloaders between silos as we empty one and open the next one. So it's a good opportunity to check over everything and replace anything that's worn while it's on the ground. Patz offers stainless steel blowers, well worth the cost in my opinion. I might feel differently if each silo had an unloader in it and was filled only one time a year. I don't know how much dickering was done, but we were quoted $11,000 for a new unloader not long ago. We have fabricated stainless steel gathering chain troughs and the wear surface along the main frame that the drag chain runs beneath. I had planned on a set of stainless steel wheels, but our machine shop made all of them out of mild steel before I realized what they were doing, so may never get that done now. When a conductor ring wears through, we reline it with a stainless steel liner and also do the same with the chute starter piece which bolts to the top of the conductor ring. | |
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Silo unloaders
