Covering silage clamps and keeping silage sheets in place, especially in high winds and harsh weather, is not an easy job, fortunately we have the solution with Silostop’s innovative Gravel Bag Belts.
The belts are made from a tough fabric, UV stabilised woven HDPE – very much like a large seat belt.
Each section is 10.5m long and 10.2 cm wide with hooks sewn in. Each hook can hold one gravel bag attached by the handle and the belts can be joined to make a longer chain for wider clamps.
The belts are laid left to right across the clamps and ideally placed over the sheet or netting joins, or for more exposed sites every 5m’s of the clamp’s length.
The belts help to distribute the weight of the gravel bags along their length while hugging the contours of the silage surface even if the silage moves slightly in the clamp.
And because the belts do such a good job holding the bags and covers in place you don’t need to risk operator safety by sending people back on to the clamps to re-arrange sheets after high winds.
Gravel bag belts have been particularly popular with farmers looking to store silage on flat pads or ‘field clamps’ which have no walls.
Why not go for the full covering solution?
The perfect complement to our gravel bag belts is well designed, and patented Secure Covers®.
Secure Covers® is a unique silage clamp net placed on top of a High Oxygen Barrier silage sheet like Silostop Max holding the sheet in place and protecting it from bird and vermin damage, the gravel bag belts are then placed on top of the Secure Cover.
Secure Covers® have been popular globally for many years due to their tough no fray design which means a longer lifespan than other silage nets.
What you may not know about Secure Covers® and one of it significant benefits is that it has been designed to reduce wind lift a design which has been internationally patented.
Wind lift is caused by low air pressure over a surface like a silage sheet which acts like an aeroplane wing and lifts silage films off clamps.
Secure Covers® eliminate this lift by creating a rougher surface dissipating this energy keeping sheets in place.
Why is it important that silage sheets are held in place securely?
Silage sheets are designed to be a barrier between the silage surface and oxygen from the atmosphere creating an anaerobic condition below the sheet and stopping the silage from wasting. Silage sheets cannot form this barrier if they are not effectively held in place.
Flapping sheets or sheets being lifted by wind off the clamps will be very ineffective. Sheets damaged by wildlife will also cause poor results.
So, the right silage clamp net must hold down your silage sheet and protect it from being punctured by birds, wildlife, and hail.
On a more practical level any solution that you use to hold your silage sheets in place has to be easy for operators to use, long lasting and UV stable. You may also have the challenge in the winter of removing silage nets from clamps buried under snow or ice.
Secure Covers® silage clamp net has been designed to meet all the above challenges.