790HP Claas Jaguar 970: Full Speed Silage Harvest

Hey tractor chasers, we are out with the Rohrer Dairy Farm in Pennsylvania chopping some rye. We're going to get to see their whole operation from chopping to merging and then we're going to head back to the farm and watch them pack in the silage bunk. If you want to keep up with this dairy farm even more they have their own YouTube channel called Rohrer Dairy Productions and I'll put a link to that in the description. To chop the rye they're running their Claus Jaguar 970 forage harvester powered by a 790 horsepower MAN diesel engine. Now what's really neat about the rye process for this dairy farm is that this will be all the grass feed that they need throughout the year for their dairy cows. So their forage harvester only runs in the spring chopping rye and then in the fall chopping corn. In the fall after the corn is chopped that's when they plant the rye. They'll spread manure on the field and then come back through and plant the rye. It gets a good start growing and then survives the winter and grows again in the spring and then they chop it in late April through mid-May. These fields are in a continuous rotation of corn to rye to corn. So every year after the rye is chopped they plant corn again and then in the fall when the corn is chopped they plant the rye. Let's watch them chop for a little bit and then we're going to go check out the merger. The ideal time to chop the rye is before the actual seed is formed. You want to catch it just before that to get the best nutritional value. They'll come through and mow this and then usually within one day they can chop it depending on how the weather is. The rye lays flat to dry and then they come through with their Oxbow 330 merger and 6190 arge onto your tractor to put it into big windrows for the chopper. They were able to put three passes of the merger into one windrow for the chopper. Let's watch them merge this rye and then we're going to head back to the silage bunk where I think you're going to find it neat what they're using to pack. To keep track of the yields in each field they run each truck over a scale so they know exactly how much is coming off of each field. In the silage bunk they pack with their two 8r tractors equipped with front end loaders. The loaders with the big buckets do a job of scooping up the rye and positioning it exactly where they want it on the pile. Rye is a little more difficult to pack than say corn silage or alfalfa and they find that these loaders work really well to be able to scoop it up and move it on the pile instead of trying to push it with a blade. To get extra packing they have the concrete blocks mounted on the back of these tractors just to add extra weight and compress the rye to make sure it ferments properly. For ideal silage you really want to remove every excess bit of oxygen that you can out of the pile and these concrete blocks really help with that. I hope you love being out in the field with this dairy farm chopping rye silage in Pennsylvania. If you love seeing farm equipment like this in action please take a minute to subscribe to the Tractor Chasers channel so you don't miss any videos. Thanks for watching!