Is silage worth to it make with the biggest equipment?

[Lymark]

When I first started playing FS17, silage was not worth it at all due to the limited equipment I had and the massive amount of work it needed. Been purely farming soybean only and could now afford the best equipment for it.

Anyone here only sells silage for a living? Is it viable even with the best equipment?

[Dicky]

Silage used to be insanely profitable on FS15. On FS17 though it is worth considerably less so unless you really enjoy the silage making process, it probably isn't the best use of your money.

[SeniLiX]

Did a test in MP the other day.

Leased a couple of front mounted mowers + a couple of loading wagons.
Spent a few hours day, mowing grass for the BGA.

Total expenses: Around 17.000

Ended up with around 350.000 units in the bunker.

Silage sold for a total of around 95.000 (On hard difficulty)

Yes. Silage is very much worth it if you manage your costs with care.

[Frutz]

there is still a lot of money in silage due to the increased yield of chaff. To give you perspective on the russian map the slightly larger of the two starting fields I planted soybeans to get about barely 10,000 of them and prior to that I had it planted with corn and harvested it with the little itty bitty front mounted one for 160,000 chaff. The value of the soybeans was about 13,000-14,000 the value of the silage was about 50,000. That isnt taking into consideration the huge pain in the ass of actually making it into silage, chaffing up the corn at 2meter increments getting the damn silage out of the bunkers with wonky conveyors or selling it at the BGA which only take bucket or conveyor themselves. If you can rectify all that the silage will make more money per field turnover by a long shot.

[Lymark]

Originally posted by SeniLiX:

Did a test in MP the other day.

Leased a couple of front mounted mowers + a couple of loading wagons.
Spent a few hours day, mowing grass for the BGA.

Total expenses: Around 17.000

Ended up with around 350.000 units in the bunker.

Silage sold for a total of around 95.000 (On hard difficulty)

Yes. Silage is very much worth it if you manage your costs with care.

Here's the catch tho, you get more hands in MP, while it's(was) a lot of works for me in SP(Not with the best eq.). Right now, I could earn 100k under 2 hours farming soybean only with the best harvester and other best equipment (Normal difficulty). Workload is way less than doing silage. (Again my silage experience wasn't with the best equipment, so my comparsion here might be inaccurate)

[Lymark]

Originally posted by BG79:

there is still a lot of money in silage due to the increased yield of chaff. To give you perspective on the russian map the slightly larger of the two starting fields I planted soybeans to get about barely 10,000 of them and prior to that I had it planted with corn and harvested it with the little itty bitty front mounted one for 160,000 chaff. The value of the soybeans was about 13,000-14,000 the value of the silage was about 50,000. That isnt taking into consideration the huge pain in the ass of actually making it into silage, chaffing up the corn at 2meter increments getting the damn silage out of the bunkers with wonky conveyors or selling it at the BGA which only take bucket or conveyor themselves. If you can rectify all that the silage will make more money per field turnover by a long shot.

And this is exactly why I wanted to ask here, the money were good, but it was,as said, a pain in the ass to actually turning it into silage. Thus, I wonder if the best available equipment out there could make up with that long process?

[SeniLiX]

Originally posted by Lymark:

Originally posted by SeniLiX:

Did a test in MP the other day.

Leased a couple of front mounted mowers + a couple of loading wagons.
Spent a few hours day, mowing grass for the BGA.

Total expenses: Around 17.000

Ended up with around 350.000 units in the bunker.

Silage sold for a total of around 95.000 (On hard difficulty)

Yes. Silage is very much worth it if you manage your costs with care.

Here's the catch tho, you get more hands in MP, while it's(was) a lot of works for me in SP(Not with the best eq.). Right now, I could earn 100k under 2 hours farming soybean only with the best harvester and other best equipment (Normal difficulty). Workload is way less than doing silage. (Again my silage experience wasn't with the best equipment, so my comparsion here might be inaccurate)

Since that was done with two people. All you need to do is divide the numbers by two.

For one person it would be this:

Expenses: 8.500
Yeld: 175.000
Income: 37.500

Even though you only earn half the amount you also cut your expenses in half, especially for the extra tractor which you need in MP compared to SP. (Which isn't even taken into account for this calculation)

Compared to the previous games in the series, this time you definitely need to work harder and keep your machines running in order to make a profit.
Every day a piece of equipment is not used is an expense, especially for the bigger equipment and on the Hard difficulty setting.

In the end I would still say "Yes. Silage is worth it" But, you really need to dedicate yourself and your farm into making it if you wanna earn the big money.

[Frutz]

Originally posted by Lymark:

Originally posted by BG79:

there is still a lot of money in silage due to the increased yield of chaff. To give you perspective on the russian map the slightly larger of the two starting fields I planted soybeans to get about barely 10,000 of them and prior to that I had it planted with corn and harvested it with the little itty bitty front mounted one for 160,000 chaff. The value of the soybeans was about 13,000-14,000 the value of the silage was about 50,000. That isnt taking into consideration the huge pain in the ass of actually making it into silage, chaffing up the corn at 2meter increments getting the damn silage out of the bunkers with wonky conveyors or selling it at the BGA which only take bucket or conveyor themselves. If you can rectify all that the silage will make more money per field turnover by a long shot.

And this is exactly why I wanted to ask here, the money were good, but it was,as said, a pain in the ass to actually turning it into silage. Thus, I wonder if the best available equipment out there could make up with that long process?

If you're not opposed to using mods I have seen some auger wagon mods out there modded to take chaff and woodchips with the intention of them being pulled behind a forage harvester so youc an hire a worker and they'll fill that up like a grain tank and you can offload it like a regular harvester, that would cut out a lot of the work that the little 2.2m forage harvester requires.

The other thing is if you have the money for a wheel loader with the 10,000 liter silage fork you could cut out a lot of the tediousness of emptying the bunker. Conveyors can also be used but what happened for me two times I have made silage is while emptying silage into a tipper with a conveyor there would be patches underneath the silage of still unfermented chaff. That would require me to move my conveyor to tip onto the ground so it would go back to silage. I would have to do that 5+ times during the process of trying to fill a 31,000 liter tipper. It took a while and I am almost certain 3 silage forks with the wheel loader would go considerably faster but if cost is a concern the conveyors are much cheaper.

I miss the FS13 way when you could sell silage with a tipper as the BGA's had their sell point at ground level. I don't know why they made it front loader only from FS15 on, it's annoying.

You can do it on the cheap by leasing the little pottinger forage harvester, using GPS mod to get the lines right, leasing a decent sized tipper and buying/leasing the conveyors.

[freetime73]

I am starting to think its not worth the effort I sowed all my fields with corn,hired the equipment to harvest it (chaff).When it was ready which took alot effort to get there I bought a wheel loader with silage fork only to watch you lose £50 per load because of the price drop.I saw many people saying the price was too high on fs15 and i agreed with that but now I think its gone too far the other way it would be better if it wasnt attached to the economy as the economy on here is rather harsh in the way the price drops so quickly.

[Lymark]

Thanks guys, guess I'd just save my money for expansion to farm even more soybean instead! :)