harveststore silo ?

what was the story on the the blue harveststore silos?
seems like a lot built in the 60-70-80s, now most in my area are not used,
how are they differant from a block silo? what were the advantages?
have you ever used one? good or bad? corn silage or hay?
thanks for your help!

I worked at a dairy farm that had a Harvestore silo. Top load, bottom unload. The blue is glass. It is fused to the metal on all sides. We chopped corn to fill it. Close it up and let it ferment for a while, or we usually just started feeding it right away. Very little spoilage loss. The big disadvantage was if the unloader broke you had to dig it out or figure out some way to get it out to fix it....

Well they were a Oxegen Limiting silo, were they a good deal, not really, almost all are empty now or taken down, for a small50-70 head Dairy farm they were handy, if the bottom unloader worked, They were just too expensieve for what you got! There is a standing joke, They are called the Blue Tombstone. For corn silage you just didn't need one,a pile on the ground, you had good feed and not near the investment, and the silo didn't hold much, I never had one, never wanted one, but a sales man stopped in once, gave me the sales pitch!!!

have 2 on the farm been in use since early 80s excellent feed if put up right. serviced yearly never had any major problems Bottom unloading is nice

In my area there was a period (early 1980’s) when high moisture shelled corn became popular for a feed for dairy cows. Harvestore silos were popular for storing this feed along with hay silage. One of my neighbors used to say when he saw a new harvestore go up that was a good predictor of an auction at that farm in a year or two.

The sales pitch in the 70s was with a timer, you did not need to be there to feed the cows. There are a few still used around here for shelled corn.

No livestock on the farms any more. Good silo, a sealed unit, that it sealed out air giving you zero spoilage, excellent livestock feed. Stored hi-moisture shell-corn, corn and hay silage. fill at top ,unload out the bottom..

I see a few around here, not sure if they're still in use or not. Some are harveststore, aquastore and slurrystore

A nickname for a Harvestore in my neighborhood was blue coffin. The only reason the word coffin was used was they were expensive. The farmer who put one up needed deep pockets to have one built. They did put out good quality feed though. I know of two farmers in my neck of the woods who filled Harvestores with wet shelled corn for hog feed. Every day or maybe twice a day they would run corn from the Harvestor through a roller mill then mixed in other ingredients to make the proper ration for the hogs. The feed had to be mixed every day without fail because feed kept longer would mold because of the moisture content. My father in law used a Harvestore this way. It worked very well when the automation operated like it was supposed to. One neighbor filled his Harvestore with shelled corn using a blower that blew air into the pipe going to the top and the shelled corn was introduced to the air stream after the blower. I dont know of any hog farmers using a Harvestore anymore because using dry ground feed is much more economical and much less labor intensive. There are other factors also.

I have three of them that my dad built from 1974-1992. Don't use them anymore because I got out of the cattle business two years ago. They worked very well for us while we used them. We had one for shelled corn and two 80 foot forage units. The biggest problem was user error. People would put feed in too wet and then it wouldn't unload. Sometimes I would put feed in that was almost dry enough to bale and it would come smelling like it did when it went in. Today's larger operations would need too many of them to be feasible. However, a new $70,000 skid loader to fill the TMR every two years isn't free either. Most of the stave silos around me do not get used anymore either.

Quite a few still in use in Wisconsin along with their manure slurry systems. AO Smith no longer makes them. AO Smith in Milwaukee made huge bolted steel beer vats that when stood on end, became a silo. Developed from there. They are being made by someone. CST?

When I worked for Michigan Glass Lined in the 70's it was their hay day. High milk support payments and easy credit drove dairy expansion. They had actually been around since the late 40's early 50's. Unfortunately the unloader system required a fair amount of maintenance and care in operation. Unloader service required pulling a 5,000 pound machine out on a set of blocked up pipes or rails. The ware parts on the unloader (mainly the cutter chair) were expensive and a failure in operation created a difficult situation to say the least. The other area that caused a lot of issues was the continuous filling concept which was sold to owners. The problem originates because the silage in the top half of a silo is not compacted as densely as the bottom half. As a silo was filed that top half compacted and often pinned the unloader arm. In normal operation there is a hollow area (called the dome)in the center of the bottom and the sweep arm just cuts the outer edge of what is effectively an arch of silage. If the silo was filled too quickly and the unloader was not run every so often the dome would collapse and pin the unloader sweep arm. The best thing to do while filling was to actually pull the unloader and let it set on the pipes during filling. But this required recreating the dome system by putting the unloader in on "short arm" and then pulling it back out and reinstalling a section of the arm and a length of cutter chair. Repair of a broken cutter chain consisted of digging into the dome area clearing an area and pulling the sweep arm hub and tossing the arm and cutter chain parts out the tunnel. Air was supplied by using a small hand blower and a piece of pipe. Not a job for the claustrophobic, at times a cutting torch was required to separate the parts. I was in hundreds of domes, on my last summer my partner and I went on 52 dig outs in a row. My first wife hated it, you came home after literally rolling in sileage juice,but I think the part shed hated worse was she never knew when I would get home. Don't get me started on changing those breather bags.

This guy is-was a dealer. He may be able to help you out. Last I heard he has some for sale. Morning Big Tee.

I have hunch if everyone followed 1200tk's probram and serviced the unloader every year they would cut down on the mechanical problems. My father in law used four Harvestores for silage for feeding cattle besides the one he used for wet shelled corn. He was not good about maintenance so they did their share of tunneling to fix the unloader. They had bunkline feeders that filled the feed bunks with an auger and rotating tube. It was a nice system, they could fill the bunks rain or shine without driving into the cattle lot with a feed wagon. He did not build this system. It was built by a wealthy landlord who had the spare money laying around to spend but I don't know if the landlord shared in the maintenance expenses.

I think the Harvestore system still is a good idea in small organic dairy, or direct market beef operations. Somewhere that large scale / high volume isnt the driving force. Quality of product produced is reflected on payment received. Haylege out of a blue (tumbstone) is second to none. They were not designed to be filled super fast, or emptied super fast. This was during a time every farm was much smaller. Today everyone wants to go, go, go, then set home and complain about low prices while crying for more Gov welfare to fill in the gaps. A Harvestore was only as good as the farmer who maintained them. Talk with anyone who has one and pulled the unloader every 6 months to grease and service it. They dont have long lists of horror stories. Most will tell you of years of good service. Same with feed, put in junk, feed out junk. Feed in a (bankruptcy tube) had to go in at the right moisture, be in a big hurry to go, go, and you will have unloader problems. This wasnt the silos fault. Take a look at old tractors, how many have you EVER came across that were not restored that were clean?? Most have been road hard n put away wet. They show how much maintenance and care its owner showed it. Now that's the same guy who had silos. How much care did they see? They were run hard until they failed. Now the farmer goes to the coffee shop and talks trash about his(auction marker) and now six guys leave spreading the trash. Now out of six guys only one knows the TRUTH why his silo is giving him trouble. Just like a tractor or combine it was sold with a owners manual. How many do you think ever got fully read? How many were built and the farmer never asked to be taught how to maintain it? Just go, go fast until something breaks, then blame anyone but themselves. I think enough of these units that I will open my piggy bank and build one as soon as I find one with an unloader that isnt junk. They are now being torn down and rebuilt using a crane and lifted from the top. I am still in the learning stages, but if you talk with more than a couple men who have used them you will find one common thing. Those who took care of the silo most times did ok. Al

Big during the late 1960's and through the 1970's. Dad looked into one but thankfully nothing ever came of it. Good feed as reputed but expensive. The 1980's come and the big blue silos are just another financial straw on the back of a camel whose back is about to break. There are several around but I don't know of one that is in use or has been used recently. Most were taken down and resold. I understand that quite a number of those found their way into Canada. Like anything else preventative maintenance is the key to keeping them in running order but most farms got to a point where the squeaky wheel got the oil meaning the silo got no attention until something was failing.

I heard of them called Blue Tombstones!

WE have six of them, we sold our dairy cattle so they are not used now....they had advantages and disadvantages ....but if you put the feed in at the right moisture and maintained the unloaders they weren't that bad....one of the advantages was the top fill bottom unload feature...if you only had ten load to put in ,just open the top put it in and close it back up....done. Sure we had a few dig-outs....and sometimes you had to buy a new cutter chain when the budget was already stretched thin....but over all they weren't that bad. They just don't fit into the way things are done on the huge dairy farms of today.

I can think of about 20 of the blue monuments around me, and only one that I know is being used for high moisture corn , two have been converted into holding bins for a corn dryer, and the rest are empty and have been for many years. Too expensive to build, too expensive to maintain and way way too slow to unload for silage, not so bad for grain corn. They cost too much to build relative to the volume of silage they can hold. Very few stave silos are used anymore either. Unloaders are too expensive to dedicate one unloader to each silo. And when an unloader is getting old, they are junk. When the tractor that you are using to get silage from a bunk or a bag gets old, you can trade it on a new one. And the money tied up in an unloader will only unload silage, while the tractor that unloads a bunk or a bag, can move round bales, clean the snow from the driveway or run the genset if the powers out. Tower silos just don’t cut it as a wise use of dollars anymore. Before everyone had 4 Ed tractors with strong loaders and cabs, having a tower full of feed right beside the barn was a huge asset. Not so much anymore.

I think the silo company is still in business moving and parts for the smaller ones, they are still popular with the Amish, other small specialty livestock operations?

They just got too expensive and too small for the big dairies these days.

Then the mold lawsuit came, that didn’t help. Was a long messy case, and the silos were losing popularity anyhow.

Today they use the white plastic bags, stuff full. This lets you put up a lot or a little forage, not limited to the size of the silo.

And bunkers, big piles of silage covered with a plastic tarp, again if you get more cows just make the pile bigger, you are not limited to a size.

Paul

Well said. I would add that initially the biggest criticism is that they were inefficient in terms of loading and unloading when herd sizes grew to several hundred cows and more back around 30-35 years ago. I recall many saying that pushing silage up a 9 inch blower pipe was too darned slow.

Mel--I figured this was coming from you--Smart Azz!!!! What's new? It is snowing here--about 3 in. so far. Did you all have a good Christmas? We had a "quiet one".--See Ya---Tee

Just happen to have one silo left--Almost new--low mileage--one owner!! All you have to do is take over payments!!

An excellent commentary that extends to many other things in life besides silos and equipment.

So in reality the guy with the havestore was actually the guy who was trying to get out of work instead of the other way around

(quoted from post at 10:57:16 12/27/20) if you only had ten load to put in ,just open the top put it in and close it back up....done. Sure we had a few dig-outs....and sometimes you had to buy a new cutter chain when the budget was already stretched thin....but over all they weren't that bad. They just don't fit into the way things are done on the huge dairy farms of today.

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My understanding was that you couldn't just open the top and fill the silo while feeding out of the bottom. You had to pull the unloader, even for one load.

Just one dig-out would be enough for me to pack the bottom with dynamite and send the thing rocketing to the moon. I assume that would mean tunneling under hundreds of tons of silage and all I have to say on that is, NOPE!