Silage making

Aims of Fodder Conservation – Advantages and Disadvantages

With the availability of high fodder-yielding varieties of season bound and perennial fodder crops, there is glut of fodder during the peak periods of growth and scancity during other periods. The best way to regulate the supply of palatable and nutritive fodder during the lean periods of october and November and may to july is to conserve the surplus fodder in the form of hay and silage. A

similar situation is also experience in the case of grassland species which essentially comprise the monsoon grasses. These grasses give abundant fodder during the mansoon period and in summer the forage production is almost negligible owing to their dormancy with the advent of winter and acute moisture stress. Thus it is essential that surplus fodder should be conserved during the period of excess growth, in the form of hay and silage. The need for the conservation of fodder is all the more warranted in the drought – prone areas, where crop failures are frequent.

Advantages

1. It is less at risk from the weather than hay-making.

2. The ensiling process is the only means by which the entire forage plant can be preserved in a succulent form. The crops can be harvested and stored at the time of its development when it has the maximum nutritive value.

3. Retains higher performance of nutrients than hay because losses due to shattering and bleaching are minimized. Silage preserves 85 percent of feed energy. Hay under best condition preserves only 80 percent and under poor condition 50-60 percent.

4. Silage crops have more yeild than other hay-crops. Earlier cuttings at higher levels of digestibility is possible and regrowth are quicker. Thus, more feed nutrients can be grown on an acre of crops used for silage than an acre used for most other purpose.

5. The crop can be preserved as silage more cheaply, more quickly and with less labour.

6. Mechanization from field cutting to feeding is easier with silage.

7. It requires less storage space then hay.

8. Fear of fire is voided.

9. Practically any forage crop is fit for ensiling. Weedy crops and crops with thic stalks can be ensiled equally well.

Paper – II Feeds and Feeding of Animals 329

10. Many by-products can be economically used.

11. Where conservation is incidental to or integrated with grazing, silage making is more dependable as a method of cleaning up soiled swords and ensuring aftermath grazing.

12. Converting crop into silage clears the land earlier.

13. It is palatible and slightly laxative.

14. It is a better source of protein and carotene than hay.

15. There is a wider choice of feeding methods for silage.

16. Ensiling ensures better storage for a long time.

Disadvantages

1. Requires soil and special equipment.

2. Less amount of Vitamin D in silage than hay.

3. Additional expenses are involved for preservatives.

4. Due to moisture content, tonnage and transporting charges are increased.

5. Wet silage can present difficult problem of disposal of effluent.

6. Smell from poorly fermented silage can create problems.

7. Wastage may be high when only small amounts are made at one

time.

8.4 Design of Silage Pit

There are two types of silipits

1. Pit Silo

2. Tower Silo

A pit of 3 x 15 x 1 meter dimension is prepared (or) drug. For 100 quintals of green grass. The bottom and sides of the pits are covered with paddy straw. The silage pit is filled with green fodder upto about 2.73 above the ground level and covered top make silage.

Dairying

Tower Silo

Tower silo is round. Cylindrical an is constructed above the ground level. The height varies from 5 to 10 meters with a diameter of 10 to 15 meters.

The construction of tower silo is expensive. In tower silo the filling of fodder crop material and sealing is the same as in pit silo. The material is well preserved in this.

Methods of Silage Making

8.5.1 Selection and Harvesting of Crop for Silage

Crops suitable for making silage to be used viz. Maize, sorghum, all green grasses, lucerne, Berseem, cow peas, soya beans, Oats, Barley, Red clover Lavidoclover etc.

Almost all forage crops are suitable for silage making. Even some crops that are unsuitable as green fodder (or) hay due to bitterness or off flavor are suitable as silage as they appear to lose these qualities during ensiling. Maize is a popular crop for silage – it yields highly. Besides, at the stage of cutting for ensiling, it possesses the required dry matter percentage and available sugars. Thus normal fermentation is ensured without the addition of any preservation. The fodder can be harvest at 60-70 days cutting and yield 20-25 tonne per acre. Three crops can be obtained in a year. Sorghum is another important silage crop. The sweet sorghum is better for silage than grain sorghum.

It should be cut in the dough stage. Grasses and legumes when used for silage are usually referred to as hay crop silages. Ensiling them requires special methods.

Paper – II Feeds and Feeding of Animals

8.5.2 Requisites of Silo:

(a) The wallsshould be unpermeable.

(b) Should be sufficiently deep.

(c) Must be located in an-elevated ground.

(d) The size of the silo should be calculated on the basis of the number

of animals to be fed and length of the feeding period.

For 100 quintols of grass 3 x 1, 5 x 1 meter dimensions pit is required.

Fig. 8.2 Pit Silo

8.5.3 Silage Making

(a) Crops suitable for making silage to be used viz. Maize, Sorghum which do not required special treatment (or) preservative like mollasses (or) mineral acids but almost any green crop can be converted into silage by special

method.

(b) The crop to be ensiled should contain about 75% moisture.

(c) For the preservation of silage, the crop has to be packed will so that there is not air left over in the silo, micro organisms involved in the fermentation desirable in silo. The object of the making silage is to promote conditions favourable for lactic acid producing. Micro organisms to develop: Therefore for efficient packing the green crop is cut into “1 to 11/2” pits by means of chaff cutter then packed layer by layer. After the silo is filled and packed well the top of the silo is covered with a one foot layer of wet paddy straw. This layer is then plastered with a clay or clay and cow dung. (10:1) to keep the silo air tight and

Dairying

water tight (or) a polythene sheet and for weight put soil over it. This will provide necessary compression to the top layers of silage.

If air gains entry into the silo pit yeast fungi and aerobic organisms being to multiply which will destroy the lactic acid and silage putrifies.

(d) Addition of Mollasses:

For grasses 10-20 kg per tone.

For legumes 30-35 kg per tone.

8.6 Importance of Feeding silage to Animals

8.6.1 Characteristics of Good Silage

(a) A good silage should be yellowish green in colour.

(b) It should not have strong objectionable odour.

(c) It should be palatable to live stock.

(d) It should have less than 75% moisture.

8.6.2 Advantages of Silage

(1) Silage can be stored in less cubic space than hay.

(2) Silage supplies the green succulant roughages through out the year.

(3) Nutrition loss in silage making is less than hay making.

(4) Silage is more palatable than hay.

(5) Silage can be made even in rainy season when they cannot be

made.

(6) All most all fodder crops can be converted into silage.

(7) More number of animals can be maintained on a given area of land

when silage is fed when compared to hay.

(8) Many undesirable things present in a fresh-crop eliminated after

ensiling.

(9) Fear of fire is avoided.

(10) It is less at risk from the whether than hay making.

8.6.3 Disadvantages of Silage

When once silo pit is opened it has to be used continuously.

Paper – II Feeds and Feeding of Animals 333

8.6.4 Importance of silage feeding to dairy animals

(a) Green fodder can be kept in a succulent condition for a considerably long period. Silage furnishes high quality forage in any desired season of the year at a lower expense. As there is an acute shortage of green fodder during the summer months, silage can meet this deficiency during that part of the year.

(b) Grass silage preserve 85 percent of more of the feed value of the crop.

(c) It is the most economical from in which the whole stalk of maize or sorghum can be processed and stored on the other hand, a considerable part of this cop is wasted during the courses of feeding in dry condition even if it is of good quality.

(d) During mansoon months, preserving food as silage is the only method as it is not possible to make hay.

(e) The ensiling process kills practically all weeds that are present in the field because of their harvest before seed formation and there by stopping dissemination of their seeds.

(f) It is very palatable feed and slightly laxative in nature.

(g) It is a better source of protein and of certain vitamins, especially carotene, and perhaps some of the unknown factors than dried forage.

(h) It makes for less waste, the entire plant being consumed which is an important consideration with coarse, steamy forages.