Silage Advisory Centre tips on making silage

Dave Davies, silage researcher with the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (Ibers) and SilAC, says that while silage is a vital winter feed, well-managed grazed grass will always be cheaper.

He says the most important factor for milk or meat production from either grazed grass or silage is digestibility, as each unit increase in D value increases dry matter intake by 0.2kg.

“By closing all your silage fields at the same time this can lead to major challenges in maintaining both sufficient highly digestible grazed grass and also in producing high D value silage,” he says.

“Closing fields only as grass growth gets ahead of grazing requirements maintains the high quality of grazed grass.

“This approach also means fields will not all be ready for cutting at the same time, reducing the risk of bad weather at ensiling time.”

While aware many farms require one big cut of silage to fill the clamp, Dr Davies says the problems of the last three spring/summer harvests and the knock-on effect on producing high D-value silage, mean it is ‘surely worth considering’ more than one harvest window, in an attempt to produce at least some silage with good D value.

“After all, the difference etween 65D and 70D silage is worth 1.25 litres of milk per cow per day or 0.2kg or 0.1kg liveweight gain in beef cattle and sheep respectively,” he says.

“This approach may call for you to re-think your harvesting approach, and whilst I understand that clamp silage is still the main way of preserving silage, baled silage can offer a flexible method that fits very well with maintaining grazed grass quality and making high quality silage from smaller land acreages.”

If you do decide to close all your fields at once, Dr Davies offers the following advice:

• Ensure fields have no surplus grass, as this leads to dead material at the bottom of the sward at harvesting time, contaminating the silo with undesirable yeasts and moulds.
• Ensure fields are optimally fertilised (reducing the risk of residual nitrogen in the crop at harvest) so you can take advantage if the weather is good a week before you normally harvest.

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment