Feed pads and silage bunkers

The base is the whole job

A feed pad carries loaded tractors, a mixer wagon and a mob of cows, in the wet, every day of the season. Concrete laid on a base that was not prepared and compaction tested will crack, pump and lift, and once it starts you are patching it forever.

We build the base the way it needs to be built: topsoil and any soft material stripped out entirely, hardfill brought in and placed in layers, each layer compacted, and the whole thing trimmed to the falls before a single form goes down.

Falls and effluent capture

Anything you feed on is an effluent surface, and it has to be treated as one. Water landing on a feed pad picks up nutrient and cannot be allowed to run off to a drain or a waterway.

That means the pad is graded to a designed fall, with the run off collected and directed into your effluent system rather than away from it. We set the falls at base stage and hold them through to the finished surface, and we form up the channels, sumps and pipework the design calls for.

Silage and PKE bunkers

Bunkers take a different kind of punishment: wall loading from compacted silage, machinery pushing against the face, and a constant acidic leachate that eats poorly specified concrete.

We form and pour bunker floors and walls square and to level, with the base falls set so leachate goes where it is meant to go and not into the ground. Getting the floor flat and true also means the tractor can compact the stack properly, which is worth real money in feed quality over a season.

What we handle

• Site strip, cut to level and removal of unsuitable material
• Hardfill supply, placement and layered compaction
• Trimming and grading to the designed falls
• Subsoil and stormwater drainage around and under the pad
• Effluent channels, sumps and pipe connections
• Boxing, reinforcing and concrete placement
• Bunker floors, walls and aprons
• Tidy up, topsoil respread and access reinstatement