Irish-built machinery aimed at saving precious time in feeding out round bale silage includes bale unrollers, bale shredders and bale blades, while shredders and cubicle bedders can help with bedding duties.

With almost 30 years’ experience in design and manufacture in Co Antrim, Blaney’s Forager X10 bale unroller has been proven to give outstanding performance with difficult bale conditions. However, in those 10 years it has had continual product development.

It's a consistency welcomed by customers. Oliver O’Grady, from Co Westmeath, bought a Forager X10 in December, 2015 and remains delighted with it. “I farm part-time and when I get home the last thing I want to do is spend time feeding silage. I had tried a couple of different machines before buying the Forager X10, but thanks to this bale unroller I can honestly say that feeding silage has never been so easy, no matter what shape of bale, wet or dry. It never fails and any excess silage is left in the machine and fresh for the next feeding. The whole job now only takes minutes.”

The machine now has more powerful hydraulics capable of working with the heaviest bales year, while innovative triple feed out spikes, a unique bale chamber design, heavy duty conveyor bars and side rollers are developed to deal with difficult bales.

Designed to be used on three-point linkage behind the tractor to feed either side, offset options are available for customers who want to feed further to one side if using a wide wheeled tractor, or to reach over a trough.

The Forager X10L is a special loader/telehandler version, which means dealing with stacked bales is no longer a problem.

For those with troughs or barriers to feed over, the X10W with extension side is ideal for getting silage into these hard to reach feeding areas. This model is available for use on three-point linkage or again for a loader/telehandler.

Blaney's Bale Feeder X6 now has a more powerful motor and 50,000 Nm chain with hardened rollers and stronger galvanised conveyor bars, to cope with that power. For simply slicing up bales, then the Blaney Bale Blade has been designed to cut bales of silage, haylage or straw with its special serrated blade.

The Blaney Agri Bale Shredder has a large diameter rotor for fast bale throughput to get each task done as quickly and efficiently as possible, shredding a bale in as little as 2½ minutes. This has been achieved by maximising material flow within the drum and rotor, via extensive computer-aided simulation and on-farm testing.

The shredder is a multi-purpose machine and a version for feeding TMR with chopped straw, the Mill Series can work faster than a diet feeder or mixer saving time and fuel, giving a consistent chop length with screen options giving chop lengths from 10mm to 150mm.

It also takes the hassle out of bedding, with an innovative fan design maintaining air pressure for the maximum flow of straw over large distances for an even spread.

Blaney Agri has also developed a range of cubicle bedders. Two models are available – a belt dispenser model or a twin disc model. These come a range of hopper sizes and mounting options and can spread to either side using hydraulic controls with the ability to handle sawdust, wood shavings lime mix and sand, or chopped straw.

They are self-loading, and can be tipped forward on a rotating linkage to load from a pile of bedding and then brought back to the upright position, ready to spread.