Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

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humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

In July we harvested our Canola, and we see our biggest field needs to be limed. I think it's the real dirt addons I have that makes the tractor look full of it ;)..

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Currently doing second grass harvest on our grass fields..

This repair point inside the shack on Calmden map is tricky to get to. Especially with the new JD harvester.. Not used to back-wheel steering, which makes it even harder ;) The big trailer is golden to follow the harvester without having to do tons of trips to the silo, but getting it into the silo is also a bit tricky.. But learning as we go as to how to manouver. There are many tricky corners around the English back-country..

Oh.. And we found a used plow for sale. As our old plow is really small, we figured we'd better get a bigger one now when we got the offer of one cheap.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Got silage price at around 569 on easy.. Woulda been 341 on normal and 189 on hard. So looks like normal difficulty gives +80% income compared to hard, and easy gives +200% compared to hard.

I ended up selling silage bales for a massive € 1.328.894.. (on easy).. That woulda been a decent profit on hard difficulty too.. That leaves us with 1.47 million total, after we also got ourself a JD 6250 R that was on sale.. So now we have 3 nice tractors, one small and one old and tiny but still usable one..

We've been hoping to find a TMR machine on sale so we could upgrade the cows food, but haven't seen any since we could afford it.. But currently we're still just making around 20.000 liters of milk per year, and the additional income with TMR would thus only be 5.000 liters more milk, which is just around 10.000 euros extra.. So doesn't feel good to shell out for a really expensive new TMR machine yet.. We've gotten calfs though.. Now
60 cows in the pen. Once they mature and we fill up the pen more, it should likely be worth it... We'll keep looking for now.. And likely rather invest in more land..
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

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Thinking about it, one finally comes for sale used.. Siloking.. We jump on the deal and buy it.

We were hoping to start getting straw into the feed to make it cheaper and use some of our straw, but we notice we've made big bales of 11000 liters of straw per bale.. So how are we going to get max 5500 liters of straw into the Siloking? And what do one do if one has put too much into the siloking, so you can't make TMR of it? Ended up re-loading game to undo mistake.. If I empty the siloking I get chaff that I can't put back into it..

Wonder if one of those machines to cut up straw bales to put straw into cow pens, can also be useful to undo a straw bale and get some straw to put into the TMR..

In a previous life (FS19) bales used to be the same size. So mixing 25% straw was done by adding 1 straw bale, and 3 bales of hay and silage, 2 of one of them.. And the mixer I used had room for all 4 bales..

The Siloking has room for 22.000 liters. My 150 cm round silage bales holds 5.500 liters which fit well, but the hay bales I've been creating at 180 cm is 9.000 liters each. Leaving room for only 2.000 liters of straw.. And my 180 cm straw bales are 11.000 liters each. Isn't it a bit strange that same size bales have different volumes depending on the content? Is it because they pack different amount of air in them?

I've been trying to create the biggest bales I could, so I could load more onto the bale trailer, and move less of them to sell or feed animals, but luckily I made a batch of hay bales at 150 cm by mistake before noticing it, and these hold 6.500 liter. Still 1.000 more than the silage bales of the same size (??). 2x 5.500 + 1x 6.500 = 17.500 liters, leaving room for 4.500 liters of straw in our TMR mixer. Making a mix of 20.5% straw.

I found no other practical way of turning straw bales into lose straw to add to the siloking, so I ended up buying a Kuhn Primor 15080 M new to be able to do so. That actually worked to fill up the mixer.

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It looks like it is spilling a lot, but in practice we didn't spill anything at all..

Straw is a cheaper product (I think), so the more straw we can add to the mix, the cheaper we are making the food. We had room for 1000 liters extra straw, so a 23.000 liter mixer would have been nice, but that doesn't exist. There's a Faresin one at 24.000 liters, but then we run the danger of filling too much straw that destroys the mix, so unless something automatically stops that, it sounds impractical.

The biggest mixer seems to be 26.000 liters large. Then we could rather mix a 9.000 liter hay bale with 2 silage bales and add 6.000 liters of straw for a mix of 23% straw that would be a bit closer, but the selfdriven Faresin is far from a cheap option..

So current solution with Silageking and the straw chopper seems to be a fair option, though sad that I need the chopper just for this. I guess we should investigate how big straw bales will be if we make them smaller, and if we can then get a size we can just dump into the trailer.
Last edited by humbe on Sun Jun 19, 2022 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
humbe
Posts: 1377
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Having a fairly sized storage of straw, a full slurry store and a chopper anyhow, we decide to build a manure pit and add straw to the barn. I guess the cows will appreciate some bedding.. Placed the manure pit on the corner of the barn, hoping it will be an easy to get to location without getting in the way.

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After selling the wool too, for a total of € 358.176 we decided to use the money to buy some land. We're tired of overlooking the poorly worked field next to the barn and decided to buy that. The old geezer owning it was happy to depart with it.. It's still full of last years withered and unharvested corn, bordered by some withered grain from the year before that. Why seed if you're not gonna harvest?

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Here's the JD we got used. We upgraded the engine a bit to get 300 hp from it, got a front loader attachment just in case, and also bought a weight, which should be useful plowing. We're pulling the Lemken plow we also got used some time ago. It's a massive plow we're just strong enough to pull, but still it's working width is "just" 4.9 meters, and as it's lagging so far behind the tractor some overlap is needed to get to all of the field.. Massive improvement of our 1.2m ww pottinger plow though.

Didn't know if we needed to plow this new field (Game didn't show it in red, even if corn is planted.. I guess because they didn't harvest), but not knowing when it is needed, we figured it's just as well to try and clean up this mess of a field immediately.. We'll need to get rid of rocks afterwards too.. We found ourselves a used little Degelman Signature 7200 during winter, which we can use. Though it'll be tedious to get at all the stones. It's a fairly small piece of equipment though, so we can pull it with any of our tractors. Might use the old international just to keep maintenance costs low. These big tractors cost a lot more to maintain..

We also bought field 5, between field 3 outside the farmyard, and our big grass field (field 7) next to the shop. So now we own all the fields between farmyard and the shop.. Up there, canola is already growing. Sowed late it seems though, as our self-grown Canola seems much further along. The field is full of big stones too, so we'll have more than enough work getting rid of stones this summer. Maybe we should lease a big stone picker too.
Mwal
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by Mwal »

Hey humbe, it’s looking good I’m glad you’re back it’s been good reading again. Just wanted to drop you a link for your bale shredding post. https://tysondiniz.me/haybuster-h1130-tub-grinder/ That page is safe it’s the original link to that mod in 22. A tub grinder is how they handle busting bales up where I’m from and that’s what I linked. You can grind into the mixer or just grind a months worth and pile it to be loaded with a loader. You can do hay and I believe silage also with that one to get the bales ground up for better digestion if you’re interested in the ultra realistic stuff as well. A lot of guys rent them or the service also if you wanna go that route
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Mwal wrote: Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:41 am...
Thanks.. Always good to know how people deal with it in real life. I think few use the machine I used to fill straw in the siloking ;D.. I have no idea what they do in real life, but I woulda guessed maybe just a knife or something at low scale. I'll test the mod above. Scooping loose straw from a bucket it should be much easier to control how much get in there at least.
humbe
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Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

When doing April's grass mowing, we realize we forgot to roll in autumn, so yield is not ideal.. Also, we forgot to check bale size, and it had reset somehow, so ended up creating many 120 cm bales.

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During winter, we saw a sale for a front rake, and figured we'd try it out so we could have one less tractor in the mowing train. However, it worked out far as ideal as I had hoped. Being hooked on the front, it collects the grass where the baler won't drive, if we are turning more than a little bit.. Using the back mounted windrower however, we collect the grass where the next tractor will come, so it can just drive in the tire tracks of the tractor in front and pick it up. Well.. At least almost. The windrower collection point and the baler pickup point is a bit different, so we may miss a bit if turning quickly. But at least the tractor behind can compensate by driving a bit differently. Can't compensate when both are mounted to the same tractor. That makes it tricky to collect in corners where we have to turn. Trying to raise the rake so we can drive a second round to collect without moving the grass first isn't always that easy either as the rake points up and forwards and might hit trees and the like.

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Removing stones from the new field next to the cows was a massive undertaking. With only 2m working width it felt like it took forever.. And we had to empty the 2300 liter tank many times.. I was pretty sure it would be enough to add walls for max 8000 liters on my trailer to carry the stones away, but actually, we ended up collecting 15.190 liters of stone from the field. Pretty insane if you ask me.. Earlier I've just driven the rock picker to the crusher, but dumping it in a pile and picking it up later meant I could waste less time driving back and forth at least..

Bought a new bucket for the JD.. A big 1831 liter bucket.. 1831 x 3 = 5493 liters.. That sounds like a good number to fill my siloking with when creating TMR ;D

After we harvest canola on the big new field, there's even more stones to pickup.. And my older fields might need to be plowed up soon too to get maximum yield.. Grass fields too looks like they need plowing, though I'm not sure if it actually will increase yield for grass..
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Tried out the haybuster suggested above to unwrap bales.. Worked like a charm, but dumping straw close to a wall looked silly as the straw wasn't stopped by the wall so it ended up on both sides of it. Straw gets a lot of volume when unwrapped. Also tried a simpler GoWeil bale splitter but that will only deposit the straw into pen, and not as lose material or into mixer. For now I've just used the straw chopper until I have a fitting place to keep lose straw.

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Here's all our tractors for now.. The Massey Ferguson we bought new at full price. So it's highest maintenance cost of the bunch. We planned to upgrade the engine to be able to use all our tools, but seemed hp limits wasn't strict, so we managed to use both mower parts without doing so. The McCormick and JD have performed excellent too. As we got them used at a good price, they are fairly cheap to run too. Have upgraded the JD, so we had one strong one to pull the big Lemken plow. The 300 hp requirement of the Lemken likely isn't strict either, but plowing is slow enough, if we don't lose additional speed.

With the excellent gear boxes of the 3 big tractors, the powershifting Zetor feels clunky. Feels like I'm half stopping to change gears.. Thought powershifting was supposed to help for that.. Other than that it has worked just fine. A bit limited in horsepowers though, so a bit limited use now that we have many big tools. Might put it on TMR/straw duty down at the cow farm.

The old international is excellent. It's supposed to have a top speed of 30 kph, but I get it to 52 for some reason. At 140 hp it's immensily strong for it size, and actually stronger than the Zetor with engine upgrade (at 136). Helped us immensively early on. It doesn't weigh a lot though, so while it can pull the bale trailer, it can't break that fast.. And looks the part and gets dirty.. Though probably a bit better than it shoulda been ;) The international will likely be kept on for light duty in the sheep pasture.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

What year has my game come to now? What year is this!! Why doesn't my calendar show what year it is?? Well.. It's another summer at least. After all the work we did in April, we took a vacation until July. Only caring for the animals once in a while. Now in July we've harvested a 2nd grass crop. This time bigger as we remembered to roll grass in April, and we've rolled the grass after harvest now too. Canola has been harvested from 3 fields, field 3, 9 (recently bought) and 23. Field 5 and 6 which we also recently bought are not ready for harvest yet.

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We bought a mulcher.. Figured we'd test it out.. Sadly on the new field 9, there are lots of large rocks, and we aren't able to pick them up yet. I guess we need to plow or cultivate first to be able to. (Mulching or harvesting wasn't enough at least) As we have combined cultivator/seeder, that option doesn't really work, and plowing up the entire field is a lot of work, and the field doesn't yet require plowing for extra yield. (Would be good to know how many years until I do need it.. If already next year, maybe I shoulda just done it now)

Yield from mulching is barely paying back for maintenance and fuel costs. With a used tractor I'm guessing I'm turning a small profit at least, but nothing worth the hours put into it.

We've also been testing out Courseplay. Downloaded the 7.1.0.0 version. Certainly useful even though it's still in beta. Haven't tried anything advanced, but harvesting worked like a charm. Could even make harvester self unload into trailer on the field, though it failed to manouver correctly to it a few times, due to being on collision course with it before being in position. (Might be because trailer was parked diagonally)

Also worked great for mowing, windrowing and baling. I enabled advanced functions so I could adjust the field to be a bit smaller, to keep the equipment from colliding into fence posts and the like.

Tried liming, and that worked fine too.. Though it's slowing down a lot when coming to end of lane, and starts the lanes from zero speed, so it's wasting lime. Would be nice if it could try to maintain speed while applying lime.

Tried to manually create a route, but didn't find how to. Once I had recorded a route, it only asked me if I wanted to save the route as new field perimiter. I said yes, thinking at least it would be stored so I could load it from somewhere, but neither could I load it, nor could I save it as a route I could load (after storing it as a perimiter at least).

Not sure if it's just me not having found the hotkey yet, but missing the editor bits from FS19, where you could join two routes together (for instance to manually drive corner bits where automatic route doesn't manage to get at everything)

But in general, it was smart to turn on the field so it didn't get stuck that easy at least..

Bale fetching and rolling grass I didn't manage to get it to do much. Grass rolling seemed to get stuck in corners. Bale fetching maybe coulda worked with advanced setting to set it to drive counter-clockwise, but bale fetching manually is fairly easy anyhow..

As the built in helper functionality has become better, doing the headlands manually and then making built in helper take care of most of the rest usually works ok.. Follow me is a great help when tools can be chained behind each other. Courseplay gives more options but is also more complex to work. The simplified Courseplay GUI can be a decent upgrade on basic helpers though. It automatically managed to mow grass in my sheep pen, evading the feed through automatically.

humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

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Think this'll be the last season for this old roller.. It's really been doing it's job admirably, but transporting it roadside is a pain, not being able to not roll where I'm driving is sometimes annoying. It certainly is a cheap way to roll though. And it doesn't work with either AI helpers or Courseplay.. Not tested if other rollers work with it either though. A bit surprised Courseplay don't just have a driving mode where it'll drive around with whatever equipment attached as is.. Thus.. No AI help to get at all for all this rolling.

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And now I've figured out why you lime before you plow.. So you can get it into the ground rather than on your tractor when seeding ;D.. This'll require some washing ;) Thank god I now have tractors with cabs :)

Seeding and rolling Canola on fields 3 and 23 in August. Lets see if we can find a way to cultivate and clean up field 9.. Or maybe we should just plow it to have it done with.. At least it already has lotsa stone, so pickup up stones after plowing isn't much more of a job..
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EUROFARMER22
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by EUROFARMER22 »

Hey mate, very enjoyable. Keep it up *thumbsup*
Is like I am reading a book :biggrin2:
By the way, I have an idea. After you finish helping your grand parents in Calmsden, maybe you should go to visit your cousin in Lapacho Farm and also look for your POW uncle in The Western Wilds :lol:
John Deere - Nothing runs like a deere !

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humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

EUROFARMER22 wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:40 pm Hey mate, very enjoyable. Keep it up *thumbsup*
Is like I am reading a book :biggrin2:
By the way, I have an idea. After you finish helping your grand parents in Calmsden, maybe you should go to visit your cousin in Lapacho Farm and also look for your POW uncle in The Western Wilds :lol:
Thanks a lot.. Nice to hear someone enjoys looking into my thread ;).. Have actually considered Western Wilds.. With the gold, I could make a hard economy zero dollar start for a rough economy challenge ;) Many potential maps to test though.
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Did I buy a mine? I intended to buy a field..

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This was just stupendous amount of work to get all this stone of the field. Doing it like this every 3rd year is out of the question.

Courseplay didn't work well with the stone picker.. Got stuck at turns all the time. Thankfully the built in helper worked when you got it going. Though you can't set direction it will go, so when you start it, it seems like a 50% chance it will just turn and start doing the bits you have done instead of the bits you haven't done. And as there's so many tons of stone here, the rock picker fills up like 20 times to complete the job.. *sigh*. Cool.. Giants added stone.. But no.. I don't want handling stones to be 50% of my gameplay. Thinking I might turn it off next game unless I find a way to drastically reduce the amount of stones generated.
Mwal
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by Mwal »

Courseplay works well with the rock picker if you offset the line in front of the tractor to be in front and even with the picker. You also need a lot of headlands I’ve noticed some tools don’t get along with courseplay and turning without any headlands. You could also go the roller route and shove them down to get rid of them which works quite well with courseplay
humbe
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Re: Aborting studies to help gramps farming in Calmsden

Post by humbe »

Mwal wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 1:05 pm Courseplay works well with the rock picker if you offset the line in front of the tractor to be in front and even with the picker. You also need a lot of headlands I’ve noticed some tools don’t get along with courseplay and turning without any headlands. You could also go the roller route and shove them down to get rid of them which works quite well with courseplay
Yeah.. Been rolling when I can, but bought this field with large rocks in it, and roller can only take small ones if I remember correctly. Hmm.. I did add horizontal offset. But when driving headlands, and turning more than 45 degrees or something, the tractor just stopped.. And when I tried to start inside and not on headlands, it didn't manage to make it turn.

It might be related to the old tractor I'm using though. It's above the 100 hp requirement with 140, but it's pretty light. Maybe courseplay is confused with less than optimal traction. Will test with another tractor if I start on my last new field with stones, which isn't ready for harvest just yet..
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