– Commercial –

Husband and spouse duo, Cathal and Julie Swan, alongside their son, Shane, handle the operating of a 600 Texel-cross-Suffolk ewe flock with Swan Agri Ltd, a profitable household silage contracting enterprise.

Cathal established the agency in 1984 after finishing his research and believes that “the sheep enterprise properly enhances the agri contracting enterprise, which is much less busy within the springtime”.

Swan Agri

Swan Agri provide silage contracting and slurry and manure spreading providers to native farmers.

Their equipment fleet consists of an NC, Main and a Redrock 3500-gallon slurry tanker (fitted with a trailing shoe), together with a Ktwo and Hello Spec muck spreaders.

As well as, additionally they present a hedge-cutting service for native farmers and different prospects utilizing a 15 t Kobelco hedge cutter on tracks which has a noticed and three shears.

The silage equipment consists of six John Deere tractors, a brand new Claas self-propelled silage harvester and a McHale F5500 for baling 3,000-4,000 bales of hay and straw, together with a McHale Fusion 3 plus for making 1000’s of grass silage bales.

– Commercial –

Cathal and Shane additionally minimize 1000’s of acres of grass for pit silage.

Different forage equipment consists of John Deere mowers (triple mixture), Claas, Krone tedders, plus different tools.

Swan Agri provide prospects an all-in service from mowing to tedding, baling or clamping silage.

Shane educated as a John Deere mechanic with Meath Farm Equipment, so he is ready to keep and repair the equipment low season or throughout quiet durations within the enterprise.

Movie and Movie System

After utilizing the Baletite mantle movie efficiently to switch netwrap for 2 seasons on the advice of David Hogan B.Agr.Sc, an agri supervisor with Drummonds Ltd, Cathal agreed to make use of the Silotite Professional after he had issues with one other model of bale wrap, so he discovered that “there was an excellent tack on this movie”.

In response to Cathal, “utilizing the Movie and Movie System – the mix of the Baletite and Silotite Professional – was undoubtedly the precise resolution”.

“That is the best way ahead for anybody doing a giant quantity of bales and has time constraints.”

“Farmers utilizing the Movie & Movie system are pleased that the additional price of €1.50 per bale is nice worth certainly.”

The diminished losses that resulted by using the Movie & Movie wrapping system signifies that the farmer has extra and higher high quality forage to feed to their herd.

The worth of the additional silage conserved is round €5/bale, a calculation primarily based on knowledge equipped in December 2022 by Dr Tom Butler of FBA Laboratories.

High quality silage

As a farmer himself, Cathal is aware of how essential silage high quality is for milk manufacturing and liveweight achieve with cattle and sheep.

Cathal says that utilizing Baletite is “extra user-friendly than internet wrap, bales maintain their form higher, are simpler to maneuver, are far much less more likely to rip throughout dealing with and silage high quality is unquestionably higher, particularly for increased dry matter (DM) grass”.

“Silage is sweeter, and there’s no mould, so my prospects admire this, they usually haven’t any drawback switching to the brand new Movie & Movie system.”

“Earlier than this, we normally needed to minimize open the bales to verify on haylage high quality and verify for moulds and wastage.”

To additional enhance the dietary worth of his haylage used for sheep, Cathal has a bulk tank mounted on a front-end loader fitted with a dribble bar which might add molasses to the bales earlier than wrapping. A few of his sheep prospects additionally avail of this service.

SilotitePro black balewrap movie is on an 1,800m reel as an alternative of the traditional 1500m reel, with the extra size permitting customers to supply 30% extra bales per reel.

The resultant price financial savings are additional enhanced by a discount within the reel modifications crucial.

Un-boxing and altering a reel takes roughly 7 minutes, so a contractor wrapping, say, 350 bales a day, can save round half-hour every day, in response to a spokesperson for the agency.

In regards to the product

Baletite is an revolutionary pre-orientated movie that replaces internet wrap in spherical silage bales.

Particularly created for the following technology of baling machines, such because the McHale Fusion 3 Plus, it has been designed to boost the ensiling course of and shield the bale contents.

Being a movie, Baletite offers a further air barrier while serving to to retain a greater bale form by exerting a tighter grip across the bale circumference.

Plus, it reduces the wastage of invaluable silage, as, not like internet wrap, no baled fodder can develop into enmeshed in it.

Its manufacturing from the identical base materials as Silotite Professional bale wrap means customers wouldn’t have to separate the Baletite from the balewrap after use.

As an alternative, each Baletite and the bale wrap will be recycled collectively, thereby saving invaluable time and labour prices.