- What does the price of the service depend on?
- How much does it cost to just mow with a forage harvester, and how much for a comprehensive service including transport and compaction?
The condition of the plantation is very different
The intensive harvest of corn for silage is still ahead of us, however, in various parts of the country, some farms have been preparing silage for several days. As expected, the harvest of corn for silage will generally be accelerated in many locations. As for the quality of corn itself, it varies greatly. The distribution of rainfall was very uneven. There are locations where corn looks terrible – the yield will be poor for both silage and grain. But there are also signals of strong positions. Of course, water was key – both the total rainfall and the phase in which it appeared.
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What are the prices for the service of mowing corn for silage?
A popular model is a full service package, i.e. we are talking about the mowing service itself, plus transport sets and a tractor for compacting on the pile. The comprehensive service is of course the most expensive. In the case of a total of 5 sets (a forage harvester + 3 transport sets + a tractor for compacting), the cost of the service is in the range of PLN 1,200 – 1,600/ha. So we have a certain spread, although the price depends, as always, on, among others, the distance of the pile from the field, the area being mowed, but also the amount of material collected. In the case when the corn is of really good quality, i.e. there is a lot of mass to be collected, and at the same time the fields are quite far from the pile, three sets are necessary to avoid downtime. Otherwise, the forage harvester will constantly stand unproductively in the field and wait for transport. Let us add that price differences are also noted depending on the region.
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Silage corn is already being harvested. WIR has presented the crop calculation
In the case where we have a complete set of a chopper + 2 transport sets + a tractor for compaction, the cost of the service is in the range of PLN 1,100 – 1,300/ha. However, if the service does not include a tractor for compacting the pile, we must count on an expense of PLN 950 – 1,100 in the case of a combination of a chopper + 2 transport sets and PLN 1,100 – 1,400 when 3 transport sets are responsible for collecting the chaff.
In the range of PLN 550 – 750, service providers offer only the service of mowing with a forage harvester. In this case, however, the farmer is responsible for transport and compacting the pile.
Comprehensive service or just the chopper?
Some farms that have the appropriate facilities – primarily transport – decide to mow only with a forage harvester and provide their own sets for collection. But of course, in this case, you have to "have something" to transport, because the efficiency of top forage harvesters is so high that in the case of fields located at a certain distance from the pile and delegating small carts to the harvester, the latter will stand in the field more than it mows. Many farmers therefore decide on a comprehensive service, which will include mowing, transport and compaction.
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Sorghum for silage. We look at the plantation in mid-August
