The silage bagger, dubbed the “RamPack,” was developed by Mike Koelker and his wife, JoAnn, farmers from Dyersville, Iowa, along with Matt Mills, owner of Mills Mid-Iowa Machinery in Otely, Iowa. The Koelkers developed their silage bagger with an idea of addressing efficiency and cost issues involving silage production. Mills, who graduated from Iowa State with an engineering degree and spent several years working for big equipment companies like Boeing, Cargill and Vermeer, immediately saw the potential and joined the project. “I think we’ve got a winner,” he says.
Mills grew up working for several farmers and currently owns his own farm. The Koelkers farm and raise dairy steers. “Mike and JoAnn have worked in that industry for years and years, and they’ve seen the current silage baggers, and they’ve also seen these big square balers,” says Mills. “Somewhere along the line, the light bulb came on for Mike and he says, ‘Why can’t we pack a bag the way they make those big square bales?’ and one thing led to another and a patent was born.”
Mills says they will need to build another prototype that will include their latest adjustments and do a little more testing to fine-tune it. “It all depends on timing of the testing,” he says.
Mills says their full-scale model is already competitive with current silage bagging systems. “We can do both silage and grain, and we also want to do some other dry materials as well; then we’re going to do some more testing, and then we should be production ready,” he says.
One of the main differences of the RamPack is a reciprocating arm that packs in the feed instead of an auger. “It goes off of a gearbox, and we use flywheel technology to store the energy,” says Mills. “So on the backstroke, the flywheel is conserving the energy, so as we go forward, the momentum with the flywheel carries it forward. That’s the reason it’s so fuel efficient and packs so well.”
Some of the roadblocks the Koelkers and Mills have run into with developing their silage bagger is obtaining funding and getting bigger companies interested. Mills says some big-name companies came to check out the silage bagger and run some engineering tests on it. “The engineering part of it, everybody loved; it was the best thing since sliced bread. But when it came to the higher management taking a better look at it, it was an if-then statement for them,” Mills says. “For them it became a ‘Can we do this or that?’ and what they should have been looking at is ‘Let’s do both and see which one pans out.’ I believe this one’s going to pan out.”
Mills is optimistic about the future of the RamPack. He says they already have a list of people interested in the new bagger, mostly comprised of producers who are looking for a better way to bag their feed or who are fed up with the old way, or the cost of bagging silage the traditional way has gotten high enough for them to look for a new option.
“We already have a list of people who are ready to change; that’s where the Koelkers come in,” he says. “Mike’s got so many contacts that tell him, ‘When is this thing going to be ready? When are we going to do it?’”
Mills says the new silage bagger should be ready for production by spring 2018. 
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Carrie Veselka
- Associate Editor
- Progressive Forage
- Email Carrie Veselka
PHOTO: The Koelkers designed RamPack using square baler technology. Photo provided by Matt Mills.
