Corn bags

All of the BTOs in my area use them, for wheat, sunflowers, and corn. Makes harvest go fast for them. They fill the bags right in the field with the grain carts, and don't even use the semis. There is an extractor for emptying them, and most guys have gotten all of the kinks worked out of using them, that emptying the bags later on is a breeze also. Darrel

13 feet in diameter I believe, most I see look to be about 100 yards long.I will get a picture and post

A local coop has a grass field laying full of bags filled with soybeans. Semis hauling beans in and they had 3 tractors with carts taking them from the elevator out to the bags. Wisconsin winters and springs can be a challenge like anywhere in the midwest, it will be interesting to see how they do emptying them. They do already have towers for 2 outside corn piles so maybe they are ready to deal with the bean bags.

Big Time Orfice. (operator)

They can be for silage also

I see one of my neighbors that's a dairy farmer using one for corn he also has some full of silage.

Pat, which BTO does your brother work for?

Schlight farms is who he works for .
John Co. A device with an auger is hooked to the back of a tractor. It backs up into the bag and augers out the grain while splitting and rolling up the bag. He claims prepping the site is crucial for efficient emptying of the bags.

The ethanol plant over at Richardton has probably had up to 100 +/- bags full of corn on there grounds at different times over the last couple of years. They hire a local farmer who is also a dealer for grain baggers/extractors/bags to fill them. He sets up a drive over pit like thing for the semis to dump into a swing auger hopper without having to swing the hopper each time. This is a 16 inch auger. Auger fills his grain carts (two of them going), and the grain cart runs the load out to the bagger. The bags hold 33,000 bushels each. This guy doing this gig also does the extracting and hauling it into the plant later on. He has one of the ford new Holland bi-directional tractors on the extractor, so the operator of that tractor can look forward while extracting. The extractor will fill a semi in under 10 minutes. As the extractor is working, it rolls the bag onto a roller. When the bag is empty, it gets un-rolled off the roller, which is just basically driving while the bag un-rolls onto the ground, then they come along with machine on the front of a skid steer that rolls the used bag up into a tight package about 4 feet wide and 4 feet in diameter. I got one of these used bags from the guy to cover my silage pile with last year. Un-rolled and laid out flat, it is about 40 feet wide and 300 feet long. Pretty heavy plastic, too. Seldom that it has a hole in it.

I see that the united grain terminal (wheat elevator) about 60 miles south of me, was bagging grain also this past summer. I am sure they had at least 100 bags on site also. Darrel

DanWi wrote: I can see these for some temporary excess storage but I would think on a regular basis a structure of some type with unloading in it would pay for itself.