Norman Igor from Brannockstown, Co Kildare, has been contracting for a long number of years, offering many services including mowing, baling and wrapping silage.

Like many contractors, Norman is aware of the timeliness and the pressures involved in getting the silage made right for the customer. The advantage of baled silage over pit silage in his view far outweighs the extra perceived cost associated with the wrapping system.

Norman will argue that baled silage, if managed correctly with good grass husbandry, will feed far more animals per bale than a poor bale with low DMD and protein levels. “If you look at it like that and try to get more quality into the bale then the cost per animal will be reduced,” he says.

Turning to the machinery used in the shed for the wrapping job, he points out that he finishes the job. This means that it is from the field to the stack. The most efficient way for him to carry out the wrapping and stacking operation is to use a Tanco 1320 EH wrapper. The wrapper is mounted on a 2004 JCB 412, which will wrap around 12,000 bales per year, according to Norman.

“The Tanco 1320 EH is my combi baler, as it allows me to do two jobs at once,” says Norman.

Feeding the wrapper with a Keltec bale handler, another machine that he finds invaluable, he is able to achieve an output of 65 to 70 bales per hour.

The reason Norman prefers this system is that he is in total control of the process. He found in the past that bales left wrapped in the field were damaged by poor handling techniques afterwards, resulting in bad bales that he was getting blamed for.

The Tanco allows him to work in the yard with the customer and ensure the bales go into the stack intact. Norman guarantees that a bale will be wrapped and stacked within 30 minutes of it leaving the baler. He hires all of the tractors from WR Shaw to carry out the contracting work. He has looked at running costs, depreciation, and repair bills and decided this is the best method of delivering horsepower in the yard.

Norman tries to use green film on haylage and black film on silage – more often than not it tends not to work. Ninety per cent of his customers are using four layers of film for making baled silage.

The farmers supply the wrap in most cases, as it is too much of a cost for any contractor to carry through the season, he says.

New in the yard this year is a Krone Comprima variable chamber baler that replaced an old Deutz baler. The Krone will be the main baler this season, with the older McHale 550 used as a backup in busy times. The key factors in choosing the Krone for Norman is the horsepower requirement of the baler and the bale size from the Krone is ideal for wrapping.

Driving the Tanco 1320 wrapper

Norman will drive the wrapper as much as possible and having driven trailed machines he believes it is easier to use considering that two operations are being carried out at once.

The machine design allows the bales to collect easily and it also very forgiving with badly shaped bales that may cause trouble with a conventional lift arm on a trailed machine. Norman has used that wrap and stack system since 2004 and the first Tanco loader-mounted model was used.

This wrapper was replaced last year by the 1320 EH with a number of improvements on the old machine that made it easier to operate. Tanco has since replaced the model Norman bought in 2014, with the introduction of the VS 200 and VS 300 model wrap and stack machines.

The new machines add the option of three dispensers to apply film faster. The VariWrap sees the introduction of proportional hydraulic control. This allows for incremental speed adjustment – according to Tanco it ensures a smooth and more consistent wrapping operation.

The telescopic cut and tie system unique to Tanco remains on the new machines also.