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HOW
TO MAKE GOOD QUALITY SILAGE
General
advice
 | Silage could be made
out of non-wilted or wilted grass, whole crop cereal mixture, maize, beet
tops, etc. Silage making is much more advanced forage production method than
haymaking. |
| Advantages of silage
making:
 |
Forage
could be made from younger grass when its nutritive value is bigger; |
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The
grass is wilted outside for short time; therefore, all process less
dependant on weather conditions; |
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Easier
to plan works – it is especially important when renting machinery; |
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Regrowth
of aftermath and grazing cattle are not disturbed; |
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Investments
in complicated storage facilities are not needed; |
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Silage making
| To plan works well
and be prepared in advance. To mow so much that it would be ensiled the same
day. The silage could be made in trenches, clamps, bales, etc. Silage must
be stored in anaerobic conditions (air should not get into the silage) from
production to feeding. |
Grass
silage
| Grassland should
have a good botanical composition: a high proportion of ryegrass, timothy
and meadow fescue with red and white clover. The grass-plot should be
harrowed and rolled by heavy rollers. Harrowing removes molehills and rakes
up old rotten plants. |
| The grass has to be
wilted at least to 27-28% of dry matter (i.e. about 24 hours). The optimal
amount of dry matter is 30-40%. The grass has to be cut by a rotary-mower
while the height of the grass is to 30 cm. Mowing height is 5-7 cm. Wilting
period can be shortened when mowing by a mower-conditioner and often tedding. |
| Wilted grass can be
picked up by a forage wagon, precision chop harvester or baler. It is not
recommended to pick up wilted grass by flail type chopper. Chop length has
to be 1-2.5 cm. Well chopped grass is easier distributed and compacted. |
Maize
silage
| Harvest maize at
optimal (dough) stage when plants have 30-35% of dry material. During
cutting, maize has to be fine chopped (chop length 0.4-0.8 cm). |
Silage
storage
| The size of clamp or trench is chosen according to
the size of herd. One milking cow needs about 1m3 of silage for
10 days. It is better to have
few clamps instead of one. The clamp should be of such size that the amount,
which is fed in a week, would occupy two longitudinal meters of trench or
clamp. |
| Clamp and trench
could be filled horizontally or vertically (fig. 1). Good compaction is very
important, especially at the edges of the trench. Avoid contamination off
the grass with soil. |
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| Fig 1.
Horizontal and vertical refilling of the clamp |
| It is ideal to fill the clamp or the trench in one day. The longer it
takes, the less chance that the silage will be good. |
| If the bottom of the
clamp is soft, it is good to lay a film so that silage would not mix with
soil. To dig up a ditch around the clamp, to cover by a plastic film and put
a layer of 10-15 cm soil
on top. |
| Compact grass so
that air would not get into it. The best is to do this by heavy tractor with
double wheels. The silage sinks in some days. Plastic film tension has to be
adjusted by tensing up the edges from all sides. |
| Before filling a
trench, cover its walls by a plastic film. When the trench is filled up,
cover silage by the plastic film. Then cover the top of the trench
by another layer of film and pour some soil where the film is contiguous to
the wall (fig 2.) |
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Fig
2. Covering of trench walls and top by plastic films |
Silage quality is worth
to know
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Before
start feeding silage, balance ration well. To make a right ration is
possible only when real nutritive value of the silage is known; therefore,
it is needed to analyze the silage in the laboratory before start feeding. |
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Samples
have to be taken from various places of silage clamp or trench. Separate
samples have to be taken from silage that was made of grass of different
maturity or species. |
| Specialists of the
Lithuanian Agricultural Advisory Service will help you to take silage
samples in the right way. |
| Analytic laboratory
of the Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture (Instituto
aleja 1, Akademija, Dotnuvos sen., LT-5051 Kedainiu r., tel. 257-37 271, 37
175) analyses
silage nutritive value - metabolizable energy, crude protein and fiber,
digestibility, determines the quality of silage fermentation. |
Environmental
requirements for silage making
| When silage is made
in trenches or clamps, the reservoirs for collection of silage effluent have
to be arranged. The capacity of the reservoir has to be 200 l of effluent
for 1 m3 of silage (20 m3 reservoir for 100 m3
silage). |
| The bottom of the
pit has to be impermeable to fluids, covered by concrete or asphalt. By
walls of the trench there have to be canals that would be used by silage
effluent to flow to the reservoir. |
| Silage trenches can
not be built on protection zone of the water bodies. |
| The bottom of the
silage trench has to have slope to sides and front. In the front of the
trench there has to be a canal directed to the reservoir. If silage is
stored in a clamp, the canal has to be dug out around the whole clamp. |
| The reservoirs for
silage effluent have to be made out of a material that is resistant to
corrosion and single, i.e. without joints (seams). |
| Silage effluent can
be collected in slurry reservoir if the latter is made out of material
resistant to corrosion and is well ventilated. It is not possible to mix
silage effluent with slurry in closed underground reservoirs and inside
buildings, because the formed poisonous gasses may be very dangerous. |
| If silage is made in
bales, the bales have to be kept at least 10 m apart from water bodies,
wells and draining facilities. |
| Silage effluent can
be used as fertilizer and watered on the fields, but it has to be diluted
with water 1:1 and used at a rate not higher than 50 m3/ha. |
Leaflet
in PDF format. Size 112KB.
- Virmantas Minkevicius.
Lithuanian Agricultural Advisory Service.
- Address: Stoties g. 5, Akademija, LT-5051 Kedainiu raj.
- Telephone: 370 57 37846. Fax: 370 57 37026. E-mail: vyrgyv@lzukt.lt
, virmantas@lzukt.lt
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