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We had a Jamesway barn like in your picture. It had slate shingles and was warm as toast when it was cold outside when milking. Hal

Hal,

"Beins" you posted what you did, for a southern boy, would you tell us "unknowins" about the barn and silo and the overall winter "goins" on with a dairy heard.

I'm sure others would be interested also, good and bad.

Down here the closest we get to a silo assuming you have silage in it is to dump the silage on the ground and cover it with a white, plastic, tarp. Seems to work.

Thanks,
Mark

Silos are almost a thing of the past here in Wisconsin. Most silege is put into large plastic bags that look like huge grubs. This is not to say that a lot of the silos are not still in use. There is a big investment in those old silos expecially the AO Smith harvestor.

I well remember silo filling time. The silo was usually 12,14,or possibly 16 feet in diameter. The old ones were usually made of wood staves and then they started using cement staves or poured concrete. The metal glass lined ones were the last type made.

There were plenty of hazards with the silo. Falling down the shoot,having the frozen silege cave in on you, passing out from the gases produced from the fermenting corn, etc..
You never wanted to let the frozen silege on the interior wall get too high or it would come crashing down on you when there was a warm and sunny day as the frost was loosened from the walls.

As far as the warmth of a barn during the winter, imagine an enclosed building with 30 to 50 space heaters and the same number of himidifiers. One cow can put out a lot of heat. Loved to go into the barn for milking when it was below 0 outside.
Most cows were kept in the barn except for the time it took to clean the gutters and adjust the bedding.

You have a barn to keep hay from the weather and how would you milk cows outside remember these are old pics and farming isnt that way anymore. Gots to reverse time when all farms had horses for work then cows for milk and cows forhaving calves so having them ina nice building out of the snow would be just smart also all the feed would have been in the same building clean and dry. Raising ivestock is quite different now with fewer doing it therefore more numbers of animals in a smaller area.

There are some Jamesway type of silos in Indiana. Don't ever recall seeing a barn with the tile.

there are 2 14x40 tile silos where we lived in 1973-80. they probably dated back to the 30s, survived the barn burning in 1960, still standing today, although the last time anything was in them was storing dad"s sawdust bedding in the late 60s. no idea if they were jamesway or another brand. there were several tile silos around, but i would guess that after 16" diameter, the concrete silos were stronger.

Were those barns still only two levels?

Glen described it very well. We kept the cows in the dairy barn all winter. They were fed and milked twice a day. We had about 40 cows milking along with about 10 or 12 heifers some were pregnant and some weren't bred. Had to keep
good records when they were bred. We had silos
and it took a long time to fill when they cut the corn by hand and loaded it on wagons and was hauled to the silage cutter. That changed around 1949 or 1950 when our neighbor bought a chopper pulled by a Farmall M. My dad hired him
they filled both silos in about 3 days. He had dump truckshauling the silage. We never used pits for burying silage. When the Korean War started my brother and I left for the military and my dad gave up farming. My nephew owns the house they bought after selling the farm. My dad had a degree in Agriculture and he went to work for a chemical company. Here's his class pic he's in the bottom row his name is Durham. He started to become a vet I don't know why he didn't. He started at Purdue. Hal

I'll jump in on this, if you don't mind, seeing as how I was born and raised on a pretty good sized Wisconsin dairy farm that was started by my grandfather in 1901 and continued through 1967. 66 years of continuous dairy farming in one of those states that has everything dairy cows need and in plentiful amounts. We had the standard stanchion barn with hayloft above. This provided the barn with plenty of insulation because the mows would be full to the rafters at the beginning of winter. We had our cows, Holsteins all, freshen in Sep-Oct, and then milk for ten months. Get up time was 04:45; grab an apple, put on boots and Mackinaw and head for the barn. It never showed lower than -40F on the the big mercury thermometer hanging on the north side of the milkhouse because that's about all the shrink mercury has. When you walk in snow at -40 you will hear the loudest crunches! After grabbing 10 or 12 milk cans from the milkhouse and opening the big storm door and then the inside door of the barn would bring us inside where it was pleasantly warm. With all of those 1300# holsteins standing side by side pumping out body heat, we could remove our coats completely and work in our shirtsleeves. We went to using milking machines in 1914 (Hinman) so I never new hand milking. The first thing we did was feed the holsteins silage with ground feed mix on top. They had completely cleaned their mangers of the big feed of hay from the night before. Then we started milking, three minutes per cow, three machines. Antiseptic warm wash of udders before, antiseptic dip of teat cups between cows, each milking machine dumped of its contents into pail (always stainless steel) and carried to waiting cans utilizing a stainless steel strainer with filter. When milking was completed, milking machines were washed, always cold water first, then hot soapy followed with antiseptic rinse. Full cans of milk were taken to the milkhouse and placed in cooling tank and the cows were fed a big feed of hay and then we headed for the house where breakfast was waiting. After breakfast, back to the barn. Cows were turned out into the yard where they could excercise and we could watch for any in heat. We would clean the barn gutters and, about once per week, the calf and heifer pens on a rotating basis. Manure was hauled out and spread unless the snow was too deep, then it would be dumped in a yard and spread in the spring. After placing fresh bedding (straw) in the cow stalls, the cows would come back in, all in proper order, each one to her own stall. If one got into the wrong stall there would be hell to pay and she'd be set straight by the cow that belonged there. Then, another big feed of hay. Then we massaged their udders with bag balm to prevent chapping and maybe do some udder and flank clipping with the biggest set of hair clippers you've ever seen. By that time, it was about noon and we'd have dinner. In those days, it was breakfast, dinner and supper. All full meals of 2500 or so calories. Then we'd go back out and get the silage down out of the silo for the next two feedings and do something like load the truck with corn and oats and make a run into the feedmill for grinding and mixing. By the time that was done it would be about time to do the feeding and milking all over again. Milked twice per day and twelve hours apart. We had gone to artificial insemination in 1946, so I didn't have very much bull experience. Cows would be bred so as to have one calf per year in Sep-Oct. They milked for ten months and stood dry for two, so that meant we didn't do any milking in August. Starting in June, they'd be turned out to pasture and only brought in for milking and feeding but the barn still needed cleaning every day. Interior of barn was whitewashed once per year so everything inside the barn was white including the floor. I know I forgot a lot of things, but that was what went on most of the time. I wouldn't do it again for anything but I'm glad I got to do it. Now, I grow corn and soybeans and it hardly seems like any work at all. My new tractor steers it self through the fields while I sit and listen to stereo music with the AC on. (;>))

Hey Mark, I guess that I am stuck in the past, as I still milk in old two story tie barn. We store larg round bales of straw and hay upstairs now, put in with a skid steer. Not too much hand labour in our barn, we can feed big round bales on a over head rail car, that runs the lenght of the barn. Silage is kept in bunkers, and fed with a power feed cart. In the pictures I have [tried] loaded, taken in the barn, in the dead of winter, it is very comfortable, around 50 to 55 degrees. I never have to where a hat or coat in the stable, but my missus is always a little chilly. I tell her she needs to work harder if she is cold, bet you can guess how well that goes over. We can tie 73 to milk, and that is a nice number to work with. Bruce

Glen, your silo sounds like ours in the 50's, a 14 x 40 Hanson stave that would freeze almost till there was only a small hole in the bottom. You had to chop the doors out with an ax, then climb up on the frozen part around the outside... a skinny ledge about 10 feet up and pry it off. I was always afraid I'd fall off on my fork.
Irv

IrvIa,had a HS classmate killed when the frozen part of the silage broke loose and caved in on him. I would never let it get above wast high in our silo.

Had another friend's father loose a foot when he was feeding bundles of corn(before choppers)into the silo filler. He fell into the filler conveyer and had a foot cut off before he could hit the stop bar.

Working agound the silo was a lot more dangerous than filling those plactic bags.

Sorry about your classmate..that's a tough way to go, especially that young. It seems like every year someone would get caught in something or overcome with gas.
We never had to worry about an unloader, that was a 2 bushel basket, most of the time carried out in the mud and manure to the bunks. Spring was always miserable, wet and sloppy. I was a tall skinny kid, got up to 150 by the time I was 30, so putting that basket on my shoulder wasn't easy for me. Must have been tougher then.
Irv

Thanx Bill for the post. Enjoyed reading it and learned something about dairy farming.