I feed corn silage. the corn is chopped directly into trucks. trucks end up hauling about twice as much silage than if filled from a dump wagon. trucks dump at the end of a bunker and then is pushed up and packed with a dual wheeled tractor with a front mounted blade. as the bunker gets full, we pile some on the flat ground out in front.
to feed it, we dig it out with a tractor mounted loader with a grab fork. run the loader into the pile a few inches, shut the grab fork and roll the bucket back. doing it that way does not lossen up much silage that don't end up in the bucket. If you dive in and raise the loader up, it will loosen a lot of silage that stays which lets air in and is bad. I put the silage in my wagon in layers (http://www.kryan.com/Pages/NewEquipment02.html), a kellyryan standard model wagon. on top of that, i load corn, distillers dry grain (DDG), pellets with rumensen, ground hay or what ever is in my ration. because the wagon I have does not mix, I do have to load the feed in layers. as the feed comes out, it is mixed very well. This type wagon cost much less and seems to be much less trouble than some of my neighbors mixer wagons, however it does require some manual labor leveling the feed. I call that exercise! mostly I feed into metal bunks. I also use some old tractor tires with the lower (on the ground) bead cut out) I leave the top bead on the tire. the ones off the front of fwa tractors are the best size for calves as they have less room to get their front feet in. Bunks are much perferable for calves, especially if you get muddy weather. Sometimes I will feed silage to cows out on clean grass right on the ground.
I weaned earlier than normal this year because of shortage of grazing and have calves from around 300 to 500 lbs.
I started my calves on corn silage 2 dayes after weaning them this year and had no problem getting them started eating it. By the third day, every calf was at the bunks by the time I got done unloading. they also had access to dry grass hay in bale rings. I lock the calves up with the water and bunks part of the day then turn them out on regrowth meadow grass for the rest of the day. after I get them going, I commonly feed them way over half their feed as corn silage and I have not noticed the big pot bellies people always tell me about. The feed guys all say you can't feed them that much silage, say it has too much water in it. seems to me they should just have to drink less water but the feed guys tell me I am all wet. It works fine for me. course I don't end up buying much feed from the feed dealers so guess it don't work so good for them!!