The Last Time, this Year.

Old tyres have to be one of the things I hate most, I dont think I ever thought about them before I got involved in farming, but now I hate them, and I must move hundreds every year.
We use them to hold the silage sheets down ontop of the silage clamps. Silage forms the main part of our cows diet during the winter when there is no grass growth in the UK. It is basically grass or other chopped herbage that is pickled in its own juice, for the spods it is anaerobic fermentation, that is without oxygen.
We dont make it all at once but throughout the growing season, and eachtime all the protective plastic sheets have to be rolled up and removed, another layer of grass added, rolled down to squeeze as much air out as possible and all the sheets replaced, followed by the dreaded tyres. These are full of rain water, dirt and the odd chunk of mouldy silage and are heavy, I dress up in waterproof trousers and top whatever the weather as even if the day is hot and sunny you get showered with dirty smelly water each time they hit the ground. Most importantly big gloves as the tyres also have sharp bits and occasionally a rat hiding in them!

This was one of our clamps today after we cut the last 10 acres of Lucerne yesterday and added it to the clamp, we finished putting tyres back on at 9pm as the contracters had been delayed with a sick cow at home, and didnt arrive till 6ish. It needs more tyres but we decided that we needed to eat and go to bed more, it has rained all day today so it may be tomorrows job.
This is the other clamp, you can see where we have already started to feed some of it, the cows are still out but will be stopping in at night soon.
This clamp doesnt need as many tyres as we have gravel bags and a better type of netting over it, when we have some spare money we will get more but tyres last forever and my labour is free!