# Small Scale Silage



## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

Anyone doing grass silage on a small scale? I have an old new holland crop chopper we feed green chop with, and I had a farmer friend of mine suggest a small bunker silo for silage. Wondering if anyone is doing it and looking for a few details. We only run a few head of beef and right now we are feeding dry hay. I work full time and think the grass silage would be a lot easier to harvest around my work schedule. Any thoughts or experience would be appreciated.

Thanks


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

If you are only running a few head of cattle you will prly not be feeding it fast enough to keep ahead of the spoilage.I think the recomendation is to feed atleast 4-6" off the face of your pile daily.

Perhaps putting in a Ag Bag would be a better option it would give narrower pile and keeps much better in a bag.

If you only have a few cows wrapping bales would prly be your best option for silage.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Agree with swmnhay. Silage has to be fed at about the rate he suggested or it'll rot faster than its fed. If I remember correctly they had two different size ag baggers at one time. An 8 foot and a 10 foot, see if you can find the smaller of the two. making silage bales would most likely be the best option. It could be mowed one afternoon and baled the next and wrapped the next afternoon.

Depending on the equipment you do or don't have atm, the best bet would be to find someone to do it custom for you.

Edit: Rot might be kinda strong, it will spoil though if not fed fast enough off the face.


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

To expand on my thoughts, I was thinking 2 rows of jersey barriers 8 feet or so apart, set up right in the winter paddock and through the use of electric wire feeding directly off the pile, moving the wire and rolling back the plastic every day or 2. I have a 30hp 4x4 tractor that could pack 8' width but I wondered about spoilage. Stuff I have seen on line calls for poly film under the silage, grass, and poly film over rolled and weighted at each side. Wondering about the durability of poly film being driven over (under 2 or 3' of grass of course). I have also read about vacume sealing it with simple shop vacumes? Seams like la-la land to me but I hear it works. I do not have a round baler or wrapper. I have hired out a few wrapped bales but I also do not have a loader capable of handleing the wrapped bales so it gets real tough at times. Our winters are the killer. Cold and snow and ice make moving things much more challenging, the bales never run out when its sunny with no wind. I have most of my years hay already up with first crop and a good looking 2nd crop coming I think I may have some extra grass to play with.

thanks for the replies so far


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## Erock813 (Jun 3, 2008)

Sounds like alot of work for just a few cows....make baleage...even 30% moisture hay will make baleage...buy a single wrapper and go for it...We cut one day and wrap the next...all done!!!!


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## hay king (Feb 6, 2011)

Round bale and wrapp it. try to dry down to around 39% moisture and make haylage. That way the bales will be lighter for your smaller equipment to move around. Around here at 30% moisture the aveage bale weight is 1000lbs some times a bit lighter and if need be two strong lads can roll and stand up a bale on there own. If you do round bale and wrapp bales don't use a spike to move them around. What is the point of making a nice tight bale with no air (so it can ferment) to just go and poke a hole in it. And if you stack them on there end there is more plastic between the ground and the hay plus they keep there shape better standing on there end. any how good luck


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## fcope (Apr 12, 2011)

I have baled & wraped a few silage bales. bales are nice & round look good. but two or three days later bales are losing shape leaning to one side. am i baling with moisture to high? Very few people in my area are baling silage and also white clover is the crop if that makes a difference. Thanks for your advice.


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## K WEST FARMS (Apr 4, 2011)

fcope said:


> I have baled & wraped a few silage bales. bales are nice & round look good. but two or three days later bales are losing shape leaning to one side. am i baling with moisture to high? Very few people in my area are baling silage and also white clover is the crop if that makes a difference. Thanks for your advice.


fcope : White clover can be hardto get the moisture right for silage bales. If the bales are losing shape after a couple of days, I'm guessing you are right , moisture too high. Did you feed the bales to your own critters, if so how did they like it?? My experience, if made right,they really go crazy for it . I could fill cows up with top quality haylage from silo and they go after round bale haylage like they had not been fed in hours !!! John


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## Toyes Hill Angus (Dec 21, 2010)

I think that they will all go egg shapped over time, especially if baled too loose, or a string tie baler will allow the bales to loosen if moving with a spear then wrapping at home after unloading the bales again. I used to have to put up with this alot before owning a bale squeeze, now i can pile on the ends and they hold shape.
Siliage bags are expensive, around 1000$ depanding on length, they spoil fast too. Righ now I am feeding/filling mixer for a neighboring dairy, they have 12 bags in their operation, all sitting on the ground. I take 2000 lbs of hay out of one bag and 2500 lbs of corn silage out of another. I don't like the feed quality at all, it does get hot, today it was steaming. And very MUDDY, the bags are on the ground and you need to make several trips to the bag a day rain or shine.
You will never beat the forage quality that comes with wrapped hay bales. I have a silo that goes unused because I can't stay ahead of spoilage. Yes it is more money to wrap bales, but its better feed by far. look for a tube wrapper, they work well and save $
here are some links http://www.tubeline.ca/
http://www.reesegroup.co.nz/Reese/category/Bale+Wrapper.html
http://www.pronovost.qc.ca/


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## K WEST FARMS (Apr 4, 2011)

Toyes Hill : I agree on the silage bags. I also am feeding for a dairy. Most of our feed (corn silage-haylage ) is in bunkers but have some in bags also located on ground/ mud like now in Spring. We try to not feed from bags when wet but get caught every now and then. What a PIA !!! We are able to keep ahead of the heating. It would definitely be better if bag on concrete but then why not go the rest of the way and put up the walls. Back on topic , for the smaller operation, individually wraped or line wrapped haylage bales probably best option! JMHO!! John


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## Customfarming (Oct 8, 2009)

A 30 HP tractor is not even close to be heavy enough to pack silage. I think the silage will spoil before you try to feed it especially if you going to put directly on the ground. How many tons are you thinking about putting up? Bagging the silage would be the best in a small bag to meet your needs but it has to be drier than silage going into a pit. If the bagger is making juice putting it in the bag it is too wet and the quality is running out the bag with the juice. But bagging is expensive. We have one customer that we bale 3x3x8 for haylage and all he does puts them in a stack two high then covers it like a silage pile that same day we bale them. Works great for his operation and has little to no spoilage.


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

Was going to start a new thread, but decided to revive this instead. Its been a few years, but I finally did something. I put up about 30 tons of grass. I piled against a retaining wall, about 13' wide and 40' or so long. Chopped with my flail chopper, hauled in a pair of dump trailers, and packed with my small 4x4 tractor, weighing about 5k. We hauled about 2 tons per hour. Hauled for 2 days, and covered with silage cover and tires as soon as we finished packing. Inoculated with Nutri-Lock granular. If my calculations are right I will feed 6" per day, that's where the 13' width came from. I did all this 2 weeks ago, took some temps with a long probe and nothing over 92 degrees. I walked several other piles on large farms and my packing is as good or better than most I observed. I wanted to share this for others, so they can learn from my mistakes or success, either way. I will share the results when I open the pile for feeding this fall.


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

Just wondering do you think the flail chopper, cut it fine enough for a good pack? You'll be able to let us know in a couple of months or so. As far as the tractor and it's weight, I'm thinking it comes to PSI, small tractor / small tire could be the same (or better perhaps) than a large tractor / large tire.

As a younger person, we had sheep and they seem to pack the ground more than the cows did. Good luck anyhow, your experience will be valuable for those with 'smaller' operations or no wrapping abilities / equipment.

Larry


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I have successfully produced and used silage for my sheep for several years. I actually prefer it over hay and will take my farm in that direction once I start getting involved in buying feed equipment.

When I first started out I would actually go around our corn fields and pick up the cobs that the corn chopper had knocked off and then ran them through the chipper portion of a small scale chipper shredder I had. The feed produced was about 1/4 inch cut...about the same as our $250,000 corn chopper. The sheep loved it.

Up until the big dairy farm filed for bankruptcy I also fed my sheep silage all winter; about 160 days here in Maine. My sheep nutritionist suggested 40% corn silage and 60% grass silage for the ideal mixture, plus 1/4 to 1/2 pound of grain per breeding stock ewe. I did this by taking the silage off the dairy farms big bunkers, hauling it 3 miles to my house then repacking it. My 27 hp tractor at 3000 pounds was more than adequate to compress the silage without spoilage. That is because (my tractor anyway) has these [email protected]@##$%^&&** awful tires that are narrow, so narrow that in logging, it cuts right through the soil, but on the silage pile it compacted it quite well. My silage pile was atop concrete with no walls or sides and I shaped it into a half-football shape and drove over it in all directions.

I did experience spoilage onc, but it was only because I got lazy and did not pack the pile as soon as it arrived and it heated up and spoiled. It was like 3 days later before I got to compacting it. YOU NEED TO COMPACT IT AS SOON AS IT IS IN A PILE...but you already knew that.

As for flail choppers, that is the way I am going to go. It can be compacted adequately; farmers here have used them extensively for years in making winter feed. The real problem is not in ensiling it, but rather in the long cut it makes and mechanically getting it out of the pile! What a bear!!!!

It also has some great benefits, such as being able to chop corn as long as you do not let the corn get too high. And with a cut-as-you-go ability, you will never have 40-acres-down-with-rain-on-the-way-when-your-baler-breaks-down scenario. Nope, if it breaks, you not out a thing. And there is less equipment to buy. A tractor to pull and power it. The flail chopper. And a wagon or dump truck to blow the feed into. Not bad, and its price is relatively cheap. I just checked on a new one 2 weeks ago and was quoted $18,000.

But there are some drawbacks. That $18,000 only got you a 6 foot wide cut, that is a lot of trips around the field. And since there is no wilt or dry down, you are putting up incredibly wet feed. Grown up ruminant livestock can handle it well, however baby ruminants cannot. Calves and Lambs for instance need all the nutrition they can get, so with over 70% moisture content, there is too much water. What occurs is, they eat and pack their rumens full of feed, but since the majority of it is water, they feel full, but literally starve to death. Lambs and calves need quality hay...no getting around it.

But oh yes, feeding silage on a small scale can certainly be done, I have been doing it since 2008. Incidentally I had a pony that I hated and figured there was no way it would survive the winter on silage, but I'll be darned if the silly thing did not thrive on silage too!


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I read a paper on small scale pit silage in clay lined holes. Can work.

Maine has one thing going for sure, 4 months a year the face gets very cold at about the same speed oxygen gets in so you get less spoilage than other more southern areas.


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

I talked at length with the feed consultant at my feed supplier, he gave me some fair advice I thought. First length of cut will be long with the flail chopper, two issues there, harder to pack, and harder to dig out to feed. He had a formula for packing, he called the 800 rule. He said with a 5000 lb. tractor I could pack 1 ton in 10 minutes, or 6 tons per hour. I figured double. As for digging out we'll see how that goes. He said bottom line is I am going to work harder to get the same end product, packing and feeding. Next he said packing is all about weight, and time. He said he sees farms running singles getting better results than duals in some cases because of weight. More tires and bigger tires need proportionately more weight. small tractor small tires more time to cover the same ground. My biggest concern was the moisture, because of the direct cut I had no control over that, but no seepage so far. This will not replace my hay operation, just take the load off when we have tough years to dry hay, plus when the hay sheds full I can still put up feed. I feed green chop until snow flies, so this will get fed out after we freeze up, its pretty hard to spoil much outside up here in winter.


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## atgreene (May 19, 2013)

Interesting. I'd like to try some myself.


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## Widairy (Jan 1, 2016)

I've been feeding cattle up "north" here in Wisconsin for about 20 years. In my younger days I tried feed piles. They can work. They can work, but with small equipment they take a lot of time to pack properly. When I made mine I used my dad's 2_65 white mfwd with fel. It took me roughly 45 minutes to pack a 16 foot wagon of haylage. I made 2 piles of haylage and 1 of cornsilage. The first bag of haylage was the only one that gave nice feed. You have to make it wet and don't be in any hurry with the packing. I wish you good luck on your endeavour.


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## Widairy (Jan 1, 2016)

I forgot to mention that once I started renting a bagger I never went back to piles. When I looked at all the time spent to do a good job packing I was money/time ahead to go and make a bag.


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

Update, successful first run, opened the pile just before Christmas, decent feed. I had the nutritionist out today from my feed company and he says its good feed, well packed and good fermentation. Test results will tell the rest of the story. I feel like I am getting a minimal amount of waste, no more than when feeding baleage. Man it is digging hard, keeping a clean face is tough. I am keeping dry rounds in front of them, and if I keep up with the silage the barely touch the hay. He calculated the pile at 30 tons. I am very pleased with the outcome. Definitely plan to do more next year, I figure I can do at least 50 tons in the bunker that I have.


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

Tests come back decent, quality of grass was not the greatest, but I knew that going in. Still tested 112 relative feed value and they said no supplement needed for my beef herd. I have fed out about 15 tons and I am not seeing any more waste than I see with the silage bales judging by the piles on the ground around the feed bunk. I know that's not a very scientific approach, but its what I have to deal with in the spring.

Next year I'm going to chop earlier, and do more, probably 50 tons. It supplements the hay very well.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

TessiersFarm said:


> Tests come back decent, quality of grass was not the greatest, but I knew that going in. Still tested 112 relative feed value and they said no supplement needed for my beef herd. I have fed out about 15 tons and I am not seeing any more waste than I see with the silage bales judging by the piles on the ground around the feed bunk. I know that's not a very scientific approach, but its what I have to deal with in the spring.
> 
> Next year I'm going to chop earlier, and do more, probably 50 tons. It supplements the hay very well.


Any pics of the operation?

How many head you feeding?


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## TessiersFarm (Aug 30, 2009)

I don't really have much in the way of pics, I am a one man show and its hard to take pictures while I'm working. I might get ambitious and take some.

I'm feeding 10 head of beef and a couple of dairy cows at the moment. We have been slowly growing our herd, and operation over the last few years. We have used several custom options over the years, but it always ends the same, we are not the priority when it matters. We have focused on making our own quality feed and been reasonably successful. I am not suggesting this is great for everyone, but it works for us. It was actually done with equipment I already have and use on the farm. I did however acquire a different chopper for next year. My calculations say that I do not have any more money in this feed than the equivalent amount of hay I produce. I can make it when the weather is not suitable for hay. I do not need to add buildings for storage, and tax on those buildings. Again, it is not perfect, but it does work for me.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I am in the same boat as you, but then again considering our position on the globe, that should not come as a surprise.

Unfortunately I don't have any silage equipment so I must buy some, but that is okay, a lot less equipment to buy then haying equipment.


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