Silorators

Silorators Ltd is recorded by Grace's Guide at 103 Park Street, London W1, in the 1940s, and the same address, telephone MAYfair 8222, is printed on its Land Rover leaflet of about 1960. The Silorator was introduced in 1954, when it was first shown at Newton Rigg in Cumberland, and was greatly promoted by Land Rover in the years of the Rover Company's approved-equipment scheme; a Hayter Silorator was at work on Nafferton Farm, the University of Durham's agricultural department, in the 1958 season, and examples were in use into the early 1960s.

The Silorator Dandy leaflet, received by the Automobile Association's technical library on 1 April 1960, carries the legend 'Approved by the Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover' and shows a Series II 88 towing the offset harvester with an auto-drop forage wagon behind. The Dandy is described as a low-priced simple forage harvester designed primarily for silage making and zero grazing, whose lacerating action produces uniform short material that ferments quickly and suits self-feeding; the Land Rover and the Dandy were also offered as a combination for high-speed pasture topping. It had a 52-inch cut at 1 to 7 inches, was fully offset, loaded to side, rear or forwards through an automatically swivelling outlet, and was completely guarded with a twelve-month guarantee. The specification drawing names Hayter heavy-duty rotary cutters driven by cutterhead belts, a lacerating fan and intake chute, and a guarded PTO shaft; the machine weighed 10½ cwt, was 9 ft 2 in long and 7 ft 11 in wide, delivered to 9 ft 6 in through the long outlet or 7 ft through the short, and shipped with a 1⅜-inch splined shaft. The Land Rover extras required were the rear power take-off and, for tropical climates, the engine oil cooler. The Irish Farmers Journal describes the Dandy as an interesting direct-cut, side-mounted harvester combining the twin rotary cutters of a Hayter topper with a blower, imported into Ireland by D. H. Sherrard & Co. of Cork and Dublin, and still listed in 1965.

Where the Silorator was built, whether by Hayter or under contract, and when Silorators Ltd ceased trading, could not be established from the sources fetched for this entry; no company of the name is on the current Companies House register.