When you drive across rural Wisconsin, the old red barn and tall upright silos are a common sight. They are part of iconic Wisconsin.
One of the original farms that came together to form Majestic Crossing Dairy.
Today, bunker silos or flat storage areas are much more common to use for feed storage than upright silos. A bunker silo is a large, flat area of concrete with tall cement walls. The walls are typically 12 to 16 feet tall. In a bunker silo, the feed is stored more horizontally than vertically – like it is in the upright silos.
As herd size on farms increases we need to consider a lot of different factors, like what other parts of the farm will also need to grow. The amount of feed needed is a big one. Bunker silos can store a lot more feed than upright silos.
We can also work more efficiently with bunker silos. We need more feed for the cows on a daily basis, and it is a lot faster to take feed out of the bunker silo than taking feed out of the upright silo. When feed is taken from the upright silos, it has to travel a lot farther than feed coming from the bunker silos. During the harvest season, we can also put the feed into the bunker silos much more quickly than we can put it into the upright silos.
Maintenance is another important element. There is no machinery directly attached to the bunker silo. We use payloaders and skid loaders to remove the feed from the bunker silo. In an upright silo, there is a machine called an unloader that takes the feed out of the silo. If this breaks, there are only a small number of people in the industry that have the parts to fix them anymore. Often times, farmers need to climb up the silo to find out what’s wrong which is also a big challenge.
The feed in the bunker silo doesn’t go as high, but covers a larger area.
We are always looking for innovative ways to make farming better. For as simple as they are, bunker silos have been a big step forward in feed storage.