Filling silos

Been a number of posts here lately about silo blowers and it reminds me of being a kid in the 60's using a JD silo blower to fill a 40 ft silo.We shared the equipment with a neigbor who had a tight spot so we had a blower with the long table and it was belt driven. We had to have a small pully on the blower as we ran it with a W9 and it was the only way to get enough RPMs.This was where I got my experience running equipment with a flat belt. We had falls that were beautiful for being in the fields and years that were a total mud hole. I'm at an age now where I can't remember this morning but I can remember this kind of stuff to the closest detail.

I helped build metal silos and hog barns in the late sixties (Hillsboro, Ohio). It's fun when one blows over or jumps off the jacks.

I remember as a young pup in the late 50s and early 60s a few steel silos that fell over while filling them mostly 12X40s. The most memerobal was a goofy 12 or 14X60 Harvestore and fairly new one that fell over because they did not make sure the spout was not centered properly so they say while doing high moisture shelled ground corn with some cobs all the heavy went to one side and you know the rest of the story. Fortunately the silo was the only casuality, we called it the stovepipe.

I remember filling silo on the dairy I worked on we had a Gehl re-chopper on one silo and I watched a grease gun fall into it. It was in pieces before you knew it. Had to shut it down and dig out as much of it as we could find. Good memories though, loved that time of year.

Every year at silo filling time, my brother-in-law's father would go to the local sale barn and buy and old crow bait horse for $20.

He'd put the horse into the silo and begin blowing silage. Naturally, the horse would stomp around, trying to keep on top of the silage and pack it in the process.

when the silo was full, with the horse on top, the old man would take his .30-.30, shoot the horse off the top of the silo, make tankage out of it, and feed it to the hogs.

A gal from the local Humane Society got wind of it, and threw a 2 hour tantrum in the yard once. Next year it was business as usual.

In my younger days a belt driven JD blower was used. Silo was concrete with steel rods around it. Can't remember the height but think it was more than 40 feet. Had a roof cone also. The blower loading bed with a auger was made to back a wagon or truck up to. Used head boards hooked to two winch cables to pull load out the back. When unloaded the boards were drug back to the front by hand. Family used to plant corn to outside edge of the fields. Before cutting field, a strip was cut near center of field by hand and layed to the side. Then fed into the silage cutter by hand to keep from wasting any corn before starting on the standing corn.
Was a dairy farm, I didn't get away from the farm long enough to know there was better ways of doing things, until uncle sam decided I should do something else for a while.
Also used JD cutters. Had 2 with there own power engine. One had a V4 wisconsin, other a 4 cylinder continental. Last one was used the most. Both were crank start, if the wisconsin died or had to be shut off in use. It was pretty much a no start until it cooled down.
Tractors used, farmall H, ferguson 40 and a ford. Silage equipment was the only JD stuff on the farm.

I still fill silo with an old flat belt Case chopper/blower. Learned my lesson about not setting the knife close enough first year I used it and my corn silage "het up" as the locals say.

The old girl still works good.

Bout 70,had a crew there building us a new 18'x60' concrete stave silo.Weekend was comin and crew decided to work late and get the roof on before quitting.As we started milking,a noise not unlike a bad car crash came from the feedroom and we ran,to find total destruction inside the new silo...the centerpole scaffold bearing 3 man crew and all the sheet metal roof sections,scaffolding planks,tools etc had collapsed.After what seemed an eternity the 3 men crawled outta the wreckage with non life threatening injuries which Mom(an RN) dealt with quickly and 1 fella needed a few stitches at the hospital.18yoa"greenie"on the crew had driven 80 mi to the job that day,was sufferin so badly from mental shock that Ma tool his keys and sequestered him to the spare bedroom overnight.
Apparently a stop pin shook out of the scaffold pole,and when the went to add last section,the lift cable snapped at the hook,giving them a helluva 60 ft ride.

Gary,
I can relate to that grease gun and the pieces in the silo. I got the job of being up in the silo and helping level it off. One time an older guy pulled the wagon too close to the silo filler and hit and pulled it sideways. The metal feed apron went off the track and was chopped up and fed up the pipe. It made a heck of a racket up in the silo.

I remember my folks talking about a similar thing...but they used goats or sheep to walk around the outer edge of the silo. They had a better time going down the chute.

In the 1956 we filled the 18' diameter x 30' tall stave silo with corn bundles. I was 6 years old and I would take the JD 60 down to the field and get a load of fresh made corn bundles made with a one row binder. Our IHC blower had a table on it and you dropped the bundle onto the conveyor and it fed into the cutter-blower. It chopped the corn and corn stalks into about 3/8" lengths and blew them up into the silo. We ran the unit with a IHC W-6. I remember the corn still being on the cob in the silo looking like a little "daisy wheel". Inside the silo was a man with distributor pipe guiding the falling silage all around the silo. He, along with some kids, would walk on the freshly deposited silage and pack it down. Every now and then you would have to remove a section of pipe as the pile got higher. They had a couple of chain links and a special hook. Still have 3 of those old distributor pipes around the farm.

How did he get a horse in the bottom of the silo?
I've never heard of a silo with a door big enough to get a horse in .