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Push-Off Silage Wagon
You'll like the "no-nonsense" way the just-introduced Anko forage wagon handles silage, hay, corn stalks or whatever you want to haul.
It's equipped with a hydraulic push-off ram that unloads the load in a matter of seconds. When chopping silage, for example, a waiting truck backs up to the chopper wagon and, in less than a minute, the freshly chopped load is pushed off and transferred ù like a giant loaf of bread ù into the truck. The chopper goes back to work and the truck heads home with the load. No hooking, unhooking and shuffling of wagons, and no lifting or slam-dumping of the load in transferring it from the chopper wagon into the truck.
"We think it will revolutionize forage handling," says Bill Koser, Barron, Wis., who, along with Myron Anderson, designed and developed the new forage box. They call it the "Anko Forage Wagon," using the first two letters of their last names to come up with "Anko". With the push-off feature, two men can handle a complete forage harvesting system from field to silo, and with a minimum of equipment. What's more, the push-off feature gives the Anko box an unlimited number of uses other than in-field chopping of silage:
• The forage wagon can be loaded with a tractor loader or auger and used as a feed wagon. Loads can be pushed off into feed bunks, into silo blowers, on the ground, into trench silos, or whatever.
• The sides can be left on and the wagon used behind a conventional baler to catch thrown bales. Or, the sides can be taken off and the flatbed used for loading on conventional or big bales. The bales can then be pushed off with the hydraulic ram. The back end of the trailer is adjustable for height, making it possible to "push and stack" big bales two tiers high.
• The unit can be used like a "Hesston Stacker" to stack hay, corn stalks or straw. The back end lowers to gently set each finished, compressed stack on the ground as it's pushed off.
The 7 by 8 by 16 ft. chopper wagon box is powered by a self-contained hydraulic system and 16 hp. engine. "The cylinder is too big to run off the standard tractor hydraulics, and the hydraulic hoses would also be a nuisance," explains Anderson.
He notes that during chopping, the hydraulic ram can be activated to compress the load, making it possible to load on up to 1/3 more material than a box this size could otherwise handle. "We plan to, offer this corn-pressing feature with manual control, or with a remote control whereby the operator can compress the load during chopping without having to leave the tractor seat," says Anderson. "The push off ram is adjustable, allowing you to compress loads in varying degrees. It has a built in safety feature so you can't break anything if you apply too much pressure. With too much pressure, the endgate latch will simply unhook and the load will start to push out the rear end."
To speed forage handling with a minimum of manpower, Anderson and Koser have developed a companion "push off" box which mounts on a truck and is used in conjunction with the push-off chopper wagon. Here's how their proposed 2-man for-age handling system works:
One man runs the forage chopper in the field, the other trucks loads from field to silo. When the chopper wagon is full, the load is pushed off into the truck, which is also equipped with a push off box. The chopper wagon bed can be raised or lowered hydraulically to line up with the truck bed for making the transfer. Wagon and truck lock in place automatically for transferring the load, which takes less than a minute.
The driver goes home with the load, pushing it off into a self-tending conveyor which several manufactures make, including Balzer Mfg., of Mountain Lake, Minn. The conveyor is self-tending and slowly feeds the load into the silo blower while the truck driver is heading back to the field to pick up another load.
The special truck box which Anderson and Koser have developed has the hydraulic ram push-off feature, and it also can be raised and lowered with the truck hoist, the same as a conventional truck box. "However, you don't need this special truck b


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1982 - Volume #6, Issue #2