Samco has put the finishing touches to its 1600 CTS silage bale chaser, following a year of prototype trials.

It was designed by Irish farmer Tom Carrigan and features a loading arm that gently squeezes one bale at a time before hoisting, rotating and laying it onto the bed automatically.

Once a set of four bales has been loaded (two layers of two), it is pushed down the chaser bed on rollers, of which there are 160 on the floor and eight on each sidewall.

Maximum capacity is 16 bales and, when full, the caged sides are pulled inwards to restrain them without the faff of ratchet straps or rope. This whole process can apparently be completed in eight minutes.

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To unload, the back half of the trailer tips to place two layers of four on their ends. Once these are deposited, the second batch of eight is pushed to the rear and the process is repeated.

Weight, rather than power, is the determining factor in picking a tractor to run it on, as the CTS is roughly 7.5t unladen, but a load of densely packed bales might well double that figure.

Running gear includes air over hydraulic brakes, twin ADR commercial axles and 710/40 R22.5 tyres.

The machine on show was Samco’s second production model, with three more currently being assembled. The list price is £65,000, which includes a reversing camera to help stack the bales neatly and a touchscreen to tweak the settings and monitor bale counts.