I decided to do a little bit of scratchin' and figurin' and included a not so scientific experiment along the way using gum and my cell phone.
Conveyor chain carries the feed into the bag.
Inside auger that packs the feed.
Son #3 rolling up to unload another wagon.
Here is some needed backdrop information. An ag bag is a heavy plastic bag that measures 12 ft. in diameter by 300 ft. long. It has no ends on it, just a big tube of plastic. It's quite the invention. The bag is gathered together like when you put on a pair of long socks. You kind of scrunch it together until you get to the bottom and then put your foot in. Anyway, that is how the bag starts, scrunched together with the open end over a huge metal, funnel-like contraption called a bagger that the feed is fed into by a conveyor chain. We unload the wagons of hay or corn silage right onto the conveyor chain and the feed is carried up and dumped into the packer portion of the bagger. At the bottom on the inside of this huge contraption is an auger that rolls the feed backwards packing the bag. The bagger is attached to and powered by a tractor which is running and in neutral. As the bag fills it pushes the contraption ahead which pushes the tractor ahead. As the day goes on the tractor slowly inches ahead as the bag is filled and grows in length.
This is where my not so scientific experiment came in. Always the wonderer that I am, I wondered how far does the tractor move ahead with each wagon load? Having no scientific type material in the field or measuring tools I forged ahead with plain 'ol common sense. I thought I would mark the tire on the tractor and see how far it turned with each load. So, for the first test I marked the tire with spit - yep couldn't find anything else to mark it with. Told you this was scientific.
For the second wagon load I marked it with a piece of gum - much more professional.
In the first test, the wheel moved 8 tread marks. Once again, notice the lack of measuring sticks. So, I used what I had and treadmarks were there. With the second wagon the tire moved 9 tread marks.
My next dilemma, how far apart are the treadmarks. Thinking, thinking, Bingo. I held my cell phone up to the marks to see the space in comparison to my cell phone and guess what. It was a perfect fit. Each tread mark on the wheel was the length of my cell phone.
Unhooking the bagger from the bag.
Also, I timed the loads being unloaded. This time, we had one extra guy so the unloading was a bit faster. The guys hauling the loads didn't have to jump off and engage the wagons and etc. So, with the extra help, the loads took 7 minutes to unload.
I measured my phone when I got home and with all this fabulous information I came to these very unscientific conclusions.
Each tread mark is 4.5 inches long. The wheel moved 9 marks in 7 minutes per wagon load, so in 7 minutes with one load we filled 40.5 inches of the bag. At that rate in one hour we filled 347.08 inches or 28.92 feet. So, let's say we filled 29 feet an hour. With that logic it would take us 10.34 hours to fill a bag. Now, that was in a perfect world with no problems. Realistically, it took a 12+ hour day to accomplish that.
Now, let's dig further into the facts. Filling the bag at that rate we would empty 8.57 wagons of feed in an hour. Multiply that by 10.34 hours you end up with 88.6 wagons.
That is proof when I say wagons drive by my house a 100 times a day. Well, on our extra busy days. Okay fine, I have wagons drive by my house 80 times a day.
Now, if I was really good, I could figure out how many gallons of fuel we used. Also, wouldn't it be interesting to know how much feed will be eaten out of these bags each day? How many wagonsful of feed do our BEBs eat each day? Then we could figure out how many gallons of milk came from each wagon of food.
I think it's a good thing that I can't because I already know how much money we are getting for the milk, I don't think I want know what that equals out per wagon load.
By the way, Farmer said my figures were not too far off considering the primitive tools I used. Then he mumbled something about being glad I'm not working for NASA.
All lined up to light up the bag as we were closing it.
