Homepage Blog Meet Our Baling Voices – Kate (South West)

Meet Our Baling Voices – Kate (South West)

This is the second installment of 'Our Baling Voices' a series designed to share real world experiences from farmers, contractors, and baler drivers across the UK, giving you an honest look at how different operations run, the challenges they face, and the decisions they make around baling. This month we meet Kate a dairy farmer from the South West; over to you Kate!

“Hi everyone, I’m Kate, checking in from our family farm down in the South West. We’re a fourth-generation dairy farm, but we’re definitely not stuck in the past. We went fully robotic with the dairy herd back in the mid 2000s, and it’s been a game changer for us. It frees up a lot of time and lets us focus more on the welfare of our herd, which is really at the heart of everything we do.

Of course, like any farm, we’ve got to keep things in the black (even if it’s just a little!). But for us, quality and welfare always come first, and that means every part of our operation has to work efficiently. Our silage system is a great example. Over the years, we’ve tried just about everything, from some of the early trailed foragers, right up to a beast of a self-propelled machine, and plenty in between.

These days we’ve settled into a setup that really suits us. We use two forage wagons for our first cut into the clamps, then switch to three combi wrappers for the later cuts where silage quality matters most. For maize, we have a friendly neighbour with a forager who lets us use it when needed. It feels like a good balance, and the results definitely show in the parlour tank. We’ve also grown a bit on the contracting side to make the most of the investment in the kit.

...with 4 or 6 layers of wrap; customer seem generally happy with it, although do grumble a bit of the increased price per bale....

Like many around here, feed stocks have been a bit tight this year. We were still baling in November, which tells you everything. Winter’s been fairly kind so far, and calving all year round helps spread things out, but those feed levels remain a constant source of worry.

Now, here’s the bit I’m wrestling with.

For our own silage, we’ve always stuck to netwrap and stretch film, and we’ve always used 8 layers of wrap. It’s worked well for us, keeps waste low, and doesn’t break the bank. But for most of our contracting work, we’re running Net Replacement Film (NRF), usually with 4 or 6 layers of wrap; customer seem generally happy with it, although do grumble a bit of the increased price per bale.

So now I’m wondering… should we make the switch ourselves? Could we reduce the stretch layers with NRF and still keep the quality we’re used to? Some of our customers think we’re mad sticking to our old system when we’re running NRF for them! Maybe it is time to look at what other alternatives are out there. I’d love to know what others think.”

What's Your Advice For Kate?

If you use NRF, which system gives you the best results?

2 layers of NRF + 4 layers of stretch film
2 layers of NRF + 6 layers of stretch film
3 layers of NRF + 4 layers of stretch film
3 layers of NRF + 6 layers of stretch film
4 layers of NRF + 4 layers of stretch film
4 layers of NRF + 6 layers of stretch film
Something else?

Click HERE to submit your response.

Get Involved

If you’d like to be featured on ‘Our Baling Voices’ and tap into the wider farming community for some advice and support, just like Duncan did last month……we’d love to hear from you; simply drop us a line at marketing-uk@tama-uk.co.uk.