Concrete Silos, Feeding Shed At Murchison

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 10

Concrete Silos, Feeding Shed At Murchison

The Oxnam brothers, near Murchison, have been using concrete silos containing grass as haylage in conjunction with a feeding shed for fattening beef cattle for the last two seasons now. They have turned to this type of feeding because in the winter they are normally not able to fatten cattle or even to maintain the weight of cattle because of the cold.

The Oxnam brothers farm

a big area of country in the district something over 20,000 acres. There are three brothers—George, William, and David, and also a brother-in-law, Vernon Gill—in the enterprise. They run 1600 Hereford cattle, including 700 cows, and have about 5000 Romney ewes and at present have more than 10,000 sheep, including lambs, on their holding. They have both a Romney and Hereford stud and also fatten pigs. The output of fat stock from the property goes to the butchers’ shops in Murchison and Westport of the brothers’ father, Mr D. W. Oxnam.

One of the concrete silos has been up for about two years and a half and the other for about 18 months. They are 60ft high to the dome and are of concrete construction for 50ft. The

concrete is 6in thick and reinforced and was poured on the spot. The silos, which have an interior diameter of 20ft, each hold 450 tons of haylage and cost about £l5OO each.

The grass that goes into them is of 40 to 50 per cent moisture content. After windrowing it is allowed to wilt and is then chopped by a forage harvester and blown into the back of a motortruck. At the silos the fiveton load is unloaded mechanically in about 10 to 12 minutes with the material being raked off and then blown into the silo. It can be blown up at about a ton a minute. In association with their silos the Oxnam brothers have built a steel-framed, corrugated iron-covered feeding shed 80ft long by 60ft wide and 25ft high at the ridge. It resembles an aircraft hangar. Up t» sft high the walls are of prefabricated concrete slabs. The floor is completely concreted, although for a start part of the floor was not concreted and was covered with 18 inches of sawdust, but it was found that this became excessively muddy. A feeding trough extends down the middle of the feeding shed floor, and feed is mechanically augered to the trough by a 70ft long 9in auger. The haylage is drawn off from the silos by a top unloader which gathers the material into the centre anti then blows it out. The unloader is attached to a monorail above the silos and can be moved from one silo to the other for use. The replenish-

ing of the trough takes about 10 to 12 minutes. The shed holds about 100 cattle —about 50 on either side of the trough. The cattle get about 601 b of haylage a day on average and also about 2j<lb of barley meal and they have been blood tested and fed a number of mineral supplements as well with salt

The Oxnam brothers have put cattle from yearlings to three-year-olds in the shed. The bigger cattle that are already well-grown, they say, put on the weight. They have had to contend with some problems in the eariy stages of their use of the silos and feed shed. They say that it has largely been an experimental venture as little knowledge has been available locally. They say that it is important to put grass of high quality into the silos, and in their area with a 60 to 80 inch rainfall but a lack of sunshine they have been faced with a vitamin deficiency in their grass which has resulted in the cattle becoming stiff in the joints and going lame. They have had to add codliver oil to the diet about once a week. The brothers consider that Canterbury farmers may be better placed for this sort of operation than they. They are unable to grow lucerne for use as haylage as clover chokes it out and they have to buy in barley from either Marlborough or Canterbury. They have also found that the material they have been putting in the silos has had a little too much fibre content and this has meant that the cattle have not been eating as much of it as they might. Theoretically they expect to bring their cattle from store to marketing stage in about three months. They have been using their shed from about May to Christmas time and last season they turned off about 100 fat cattle but they say that they should probably have turned off twice that number. Another problem they have

had to contend with has been parasites and in particular liver fluke. Some drenching has been done, and it is felt that this could be particularly useful in the case of younger cattle. The cattle have been found to quieten down very well after being held in the shed for a short period. The feeding shed is washed out once a day and the manure and water goes out by way of a central drain to a 10,000 gallon tank at a lower level and this is unloaded by gravity into a 1000-gallon tank carried on the back of < motor-truck for return to paddocks.

Wastage of material from the silos is said to be very low—only about 5 per cent and amounting to the top seal on the silos. The Oxnam brothers have invested about £12,000 in the

silos, feeding shed, and a piggery close by. The brothers buy in about 140 to 150 weaners and these are brought to porker weights at about 80 to 1001 b in about three months. Stock is killed on the place in an abattoir and offal from this source is cooked and the resulting liquid is fed by gravity from a tank to the pigs, which also receive some barley meal. The supervision of the cattle feeding shed and piggery Is a one-man job. With the operation of a time switch it is proposed to replenish the feeding trough for the cattle as required.