John & George Gill farm 280 acres of grassland at Kilgolan House Farm, Kilcormac, in Co. Offaly. They have a dairy and beef enterprise milking 70 cows, rearing their own followers and buying in Hereford and Charolais cross cattle for finishing. They also have a Friesian bull beef unit. All told, they average a total of around 300 head of cattle on the farm. They make silage in two cuts from 120 acres - 80 acres close to the pit and 40 acres about three quarters of a mile away.

The Gill's make their own silage so that they can harvest the grass at the optimum growth stage. Prior to changing to a Strautmann Super Vitesse 2 forage loader wagon, they used a trailed precision chop forager."Our precision chop and the silage trailers were about worn out and we were finding it increasingly difficult to get sufficient labour to continue with this system" says John Gill. "We wanted to continue to make our own silage - so we invested in a short chopping forage wagon this time because it is a two man system - enabling my father, our farm worker and myself to be self-sufficient without additional help. We looked at all the forage wagons on offer; they had to be able to work behind the farm's 110H.P. Massey Ferguson 4270 tractor. The Strautmann Super Vitesse was the only wagon with a single feeding rotor which was rated for our tractor (Strautmann quote a minimum 90 H.P. on a SV 1; 100 H.P. on an SV2 and 120 H.P. on an SV3). It is also very well constructed - the specification exactly met our needs."

We asked the Gill's how they fared in the very difficult silage making conditions experienced in Ireland in first cut last year. "We were pleased we were able to be self-sufficient last season" says John Gill "We were very late with our first cut because of the continually wet weather; most of our silage went into the pit at the end of May at well below 20% dm, It was a very stop-start harvest and some mown grass was rained on - but at least we were able to go on with the wagon on the first good days. We mow with a Vicon HPC mower conditioner which wilts and spreads the grass for rapid drying. The next day, we row up about 4m of crop with a single star rake and collect it with the wagon. The wagon has a 28 cubic meter body and the loading system compresses the chopped grass inside the body - particularly in high dry matter second cut crop. We have a full load in around five minutes. As we had a very big crop in first cut, we were happy to clear 25 acres per day. We don't work a full day as we have to take time out for milking."

"We were impressed with the power efficiency of the Strautmann system. Our Massey pulled the wagon down the swath at nearly twice the speed of our old precision chop; we think this is due to the design of the chopping system. There are two banks of long knives spaced 37mm apart. The action of the star profiled feed rotor pressing the grass over and through the knives seems very power efficient. A lot of the grass was chopped down to around two to three inches - the HPC mower does mix-up the stem direction well, so presentation to the knives was right for achieving a short chop. We were a bit concerned that the manufacturer had understated the power requirement in Irish conditions, but this was not the case. Our 110 H.P. tractor worked well ahead of the wagon in the heavy first cut conditions".

Consolidation at the clamp can be a problem with longer grass. How did the Gill's get on? "We were travelling at 40kmh on the road, so we were usually dropping a load at the clamp every 15 minutes or so when working on the home fields. We put the silage in with our Matbro telescopic - you have to pay attention to even spreading and do more rolling, but the Matbro has plenty of weight and so the consolidation was good.

"We noticed that the longer material produces less effluent - possibly because there are fewer butt ends and less damage to the leaf surface compared to precision chop. The cows seem to like the longer material too - we feed with a TMR wagon and they clear up well."

We asked the Gill's to sum-up the pros and cons on their Strautmann; here's what they said. "We have very few complaints" says John Gill "Just the obvious ones which we expected - you lose some time when clearing the fields farthest away from the clamp and rolling the clamp takes longer. But the advantages more than compensate for this - it's a genuine 2-man silage system, it's easy on the tractor and it's easier for the operator. There is less machine maintenance than on the old system and we have less damage to field surfaces so we get better re-growth. You can make more silage over the season because the system lends itself to easily making more silage from small parcels of grazing grass that have got ahead of the cattle. We feel we made the right decision to change to a wagon and we found the best wagon for our situation".