Film Footage of Corn Silage Harvesting and a Bale Gun, circa 1954

This video shows 16mm film footage of various agricultural equipment in operation including a corn picker, mower, forage blower, and a bale gun. Not much is known about the mysterious bale gun, so if anyone has information on it, please let us know.

[@GT-fi4sk]

I wonder how long it took before somebody gave their brother a ride to the loft with the bale gun

[@onealfarms9967]

I got to have a bale gun that is the coolest thing I’ve seen my dad would come up with the craziest ways of hauling hay and putting it ln a barn but this has got him beat It’s amazing how much stuff has changed but still has the same concept

[@RedIron1066]

Bale gun is way cool! Probably a good thing we never had one!

[@onelonleyfarmer]

that bale gun is cool..

[@mervjb809]

Lots of exposed shafts, pulleys and wheels that love to eat arms and other various appendages. I knew quite a few people in Iowa that had up close and personal encounters with corn pickers and turning shafts. My how we've advanced the farming industry!!

[@cdjhyoung]

I found the early example of ridge till corn planting very interesting. That was highly experimental in the mid 50's.

[@bigwheelsturning]

Looked like all the equipment I used on my Grandpas farm. From 8n's and converted horse wagons and rakes. Most everyone I put up hay for had bale elevators.

[@joelee662]

Fantastic to see how they did things back then that's a real time capsule video thank you for sharing it with me 👍🇺🇸

[@ZekenStreak]

I’d never hear about a bale gun until now. Quite interesting.

[@menninblack3558]

In the 1960s we had a silage blower like that we ran from the side flywheel of a tractor. The guy stacking bales in the loft better be paying attention with that bale gun.

[@mikecubes1642]

the bale gun is neat. that unloading wagon would be a nightmare to use. i hated modern unloading wagons because they were so slow, silos are way too much work compared to a bunk. neat old movie

[@ericl8743]

Silos are a loft are for two different purposes...

[@BrianDHoefs]

I’ve never seen that method of putting hay in the barn like that before.

[@Lagggerengineering]

Me neither, I would never think somebody would make a machine whose sole purpose would be to yeet a bale of hay to second floor :D

[@fk4515]

There may be a reason, it was innovative but since we don't see it anymore we can assume it never caught on, I never saw it and I grew up in an area and time dominated by small square bales and only 20 years after this movie was made. We can maybe assume that elevators with chains became more popular. Although with one of those 40' elevators, tight bales and a big enough tractor you can launch a bale 1/2 way across the hay mow and the elevator was full auto, you didn't have to pull the trigger for each bale. This also taught us how to work well with others as getting stuck in the mow with a continuous stream of 80-100 pound bales coming at you encouraged you not to piss of your co-workers again.

[@rodneycraig3118]

The hay gun is the best invention since the invention of dirt.

[@brianbooher7318]

Very cool video

[@crushingvanessa3277]

Dem youngins with there new fangled bale gun, back in my day....... i just want the old truck and trailer to go to the hardware stores with.

[@stevenmetzger3385]

That is not ensilage (corn silage), that is "corn stover"

[@jamesappleby1441]

Why were all those men walking along with the corn picker?

[@57fitter]

It looked like a prototype

[@awatchmanonawall6188]

this looks out of the thirtys not the fifties

[@khristopherwenger4856]

I've seen a bale kicker by never seen a bale gun

[@donaldmack7213]

I like that bale gun! Any one have plans for one?

[@robertclark4929]

Some sorry corn.

[@robwar2288]

I needed a bale gun in the 1990’s!!

[@timh9407]

Now you know nowadays some idiot would have tried to shoot himself into the loft. lol

[@danvanhoose6783]

Looks like they was holding that death trap corn picker together.

[@fasx56]

Usually corn silage was cut when it was green and then chopped up and put in a silo like you see on the page to the right. This standing corn was sparsely planted and all dried up when harvested.?

[@zeusmacafee5097]

I’m guessing that was gonna be ground for feed

[@cdjhyoung]

Looked to me like the corn picking was in the spring after the normal harvest in the fall. So much corn was down, so many leaves missing. That was just slightly less corn stand than normal in the 50's. Planters left a lot to be desired, and seed corn wasn't all that great either. You really didn't see good solid rows until the hybred seed was adapted in the 1960's.

[@JoeDeglman]

Generally to store silage in a silo, the moisture was 65% or less. Generally you could tell by the milk line on the kernels. Cob corn was picked and cribbed back then and generally under 25 % picked on the cob and cribbed. Shell corn needs to be 15% moisture to store properly, generally ground for feed to fatten cattle or dairy cows milk good on that in addition to silage. Corn silage is a good way to increase milk butter fat %. Back then they milked more for the cream and fed the skim milk to hogs. Back then the corn yields were not what they are today. Today most corn yields 150 bushel to the acre or better, back then 75 to 100 was very good, until fertilizer usage picked up in the 60s. Corn sometimes, before the 50s they would chop one row, stalk and all for silage, and simultaneously pick one row, also chopped just the cobs, to increase the amount of kernel content in the silage used for dairy cattle. Corn silage was primarily good due to it being fermented.

[@farmerbrown3768]

Now days that thin of corn would be considered a crop failure

[@farmingfishingfamilyontari2814]

Later that week that barn burned after being filled with wet hay. Two guys are having trouble lifting one bale.

[@farmerd6]

That isn't corn silage, it's corn fodder. This was probably put up for beef cattle or bedding. Bale gun is similar to a John Deere pan bale thrower mounted on baler produce later.. Early false end gate wagon, later ones had mechanism mounted on wagon and ran off of pto.

[@zeusmacafee5097]

If your talking about what they were putting in the silo that was silage

[@rocksandoil2241]

Quite a Roman hoe setup and bale gun? Never seen one before

[@oe542]

Are they trying to get sucked in to that picker???

[@zeusmacafee5097]

Even with the poor quality I can tell those bales look heavy and wet😂

[@donaldgarver6594]

Probably burned the barn

[@donjuan6324]

heavy yes ..wet ... No !!! No Farmer would ever put wet bales in a barn loft ,.. they are a fire hazard ..(High-moisture bales can catch on fire because they have chemical reactions that build heat. Hay insulates, so the larger the haystack, the less cooling that occurs to offset the heat. When hay’s internal temperature rises above 130 degrees Fahrenheit (55 degrees Celsius), a chemical reaction begins to produce flammable gas that can ignite if the temperature goes high enough. Also Barn lofts tend to get hot during the day, the heat would cause mold to grow on the wet / damp bales in turn spread to other bales around them over time , and ruin them , cattle or any other farm animals can not eat moldy hay, it could kill them,.

[@1995jug]

Love the bale gun, i bet them bales weight 100lb. or more.

[@arnoldaltjr.2099]

We used a two prong fork for unloading long ha from a wagon. And little brother went up and across the barn with a load of hay. He was uninjured. Dad always said "Someday the kid is going to land on his feet and kill himself"

[@ronfry3324]

Even back then you would have run a disc first just to level out the old rows. No safety back then. I kept expecting someone to either stick their hands down into those snapper rolls or have their clothing get snagged by the finger chains and gears running on the outside of the picker. And that doesnt look like silage but more like bedding fodder. And to think these young farmers today think they have had a full day. Ha

[@dshurak827]

That Corn crop looked pathetic, bale gun looked like some one had an idea and made it work, I could see where it says Manufactured By:

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

I can definitely see why yields have gone up monstrously since these practices. Especially with no-till planting, methods of nitrogen injection, and cover crop no-till. I can also see why we use more diesel to break up hard pan with our monstrous equipment. All in all though better soil management by far than these wasteful practices. We would certainly get better planting and soil condition, and soil runoff losses with the methods of these earth scratchers and vegetation bunchers.

[@polentusmax6100]

You can have modern agriculture without old agriculture, remember that. And those people had to work a lot more than modern folks. Even worst was my father here in the third world, using cattle as tractor. The norm was to let the jungle take over the field for 3 years, then they burned the jungle, then they planted the corn. Burning was just sperficial, the worst part was the revolving oF the soil, now here we dont do that.