Bucket Fitted With Add-On Beater Bar

Bucket Fitted With Add-On Beater Bar HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Forage Handling 18-5-39 A hydraulic-powered, rotating "beater bar" mounted on top of his front-end loader bucket lets Francis Meissen, Barron, Wis., quickly load out silage from his bunker silo. "It strips silage from the bunker without taking it off in big chunks, leaving a nice sealed wall of silage that hardly spoils at all," says Meissen, who mounted the "beater bar" on his Deere 4030 tractor equipped with a Deere 148 loader and 6-ft. bucket. The beater bar consists of a 4-in. dia., 1/ 4-in. thick length of steel tubing fitted with 2 1/2-in. long steel spikes cut out from 3/8-in. thick flat steel. A pair of 1 3/4-in. dia. stub shafts mounted on roller bearings at each end of the bar are chain-driven by a 25 gpm hydraulic motor. The beater bar is supported by brackets made out of 1/2-in. thick, 4 1/2-in. wide steel bars that bolt to the bucket. To load silage, Meissen raises the bucket to the top of the bunker, starts the beater bar, then tips the bucket down-ward and starts stripping off silage so it falls to the bottom of the bunker. He then scoops up the pile of loose silage. "It virtually eliminates feed spoilage and also saves wear and tear on my bucket and loader," says Meissen, who's built two beater bars for neighbors in addition to his own. "The 25 gpm hydraulic motor turns at only 200 rpm's so it has a lot of torque and won't stall out. It keeps turning no matter how hard I push on the loader. The beater bar strips silage from 1 to 6 in. deep. One pass makes about two buckets of loose silage. I mounted cutter discs equipped with spikes at each end of the beater bar in order to make a clean cut. I rotate the beater bar in a forward direction to strip silage, but I can also rotate it backward. "The spikes are tipped ahead and welded on in a spiral fashion. The only silage that's disturbed is what's removed. Silage behind the spikes doesn't get loosened up which keeps oxygen from getting in and causing it to spoil. I think it might also work for unloading bagged silage. "It chews right through corn silage, but where it really works nice is on haylage. Most farmers don't store haylage in bunker silos because it gets packed and stringy. Digging it out is difficult." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Francis Meissen, 1173 10 1/2 St., Barron, Wis. 54812 (ph 715 537-3629).

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