SILAGE PROCESS?

[TWOROPES]

Being born and raised in central and south Texas, I am ignorant about Silage. Could one of you who produces silage explain the process, and how you feed it.I am curius if it would fit our program. I shop for lower quality light calves, (300 wt.) clean them up, straiten em out, pasture them, supplement with corn gluten, or whatever is cheapest at the time, and flip em at 550 lbs..

 

[feeder]

When you feed corn silage it is the stalk corncob and corn kernals chopped up. It will go through a fermenting process. You can feed that with more corn,hay,gluten or distillers grain, whatever your ration requires. In the midwest we feed silage because we grow alot of corn. Another area might use a different feed source.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

When we could grow something we silaged Fall rye, Alfalfa and grass hay, feed peas.Lots of barley gets silaged up here as well. We had it custom chopped and Bagged into long tubes.

 

[Ben H]

Here's a quick crash course in silage fermination. First of all you want to exclude Oxygen. You want anaerobic fermintation not aerobic. The keys to getting the oxygen out and getting good fermintation are being well sealed, well packed/tight and the right moisture.
As the bacteria start using some of the energy from the feed they multiply, as they multiply they produce VFA's (Volatile Fatty Acids), Propyonic acid (swiss cheese), Acedic Acid (Vinegar), and Butryic (Body odor). These are a by-product, or the waste from bacterial fermintation. Since they are acid the pH drops from the fermintation. Once the pH gets to a certain point the bacteria stop fermenting and die. At this point the silage is preserved.
Here in Maine wrappped roundbales are very popular, either individual and tubes. If you already have equipment for hay you just need a wrapper. It also allows us to cut one day and bale later that day if not the next day. Spring and fall are especially challenging to get enough drying days for hay and baylage works really well. When made correctly the feed quaility is superb.

 

[Jason]

For small calves, silage isn't usually a good option. The higher acid content can make the silage an aquired taste.

Many lots won't buy anything smaller than about 575 lbs for silage.

When lots of American calves were coming North to feed the guys were reporting many of the smaller framed calves were finishing on the silage and not growing out properly.

 

[katrina]

With calves, You want to feed no more than half silage to calves as they tend to get pot-bellied and don't do as well.... We feed our canner cows all summer long silage and the calves will in time be to the bunk to eat. When we sell the cows the calves vary seldon miss there moms much and don't go off of feed at all... Evan do better cuz there is less compitition..

 

[passin thru]

Here is a site I have saved, I don't know about it but you can check it out.

http://www.qualitysilage.com/

 

[sandhiller]

I feed corn silage. the corn is chopped directly into trucks. trucks end up hauling about twice as much silage than if filled from a dump wagon. trucks dump at the end of a bunker and then is pushed up and packed with a dual wheeled tractor with a front mounted blade. as the bunker gets full, we pile some on the flat ground out in front.
to feed it, we dig it out with a tractor mounted loader with a grab fork. run the loader into the pile a few inches, shut the grab fork and roll the bucket back. doing it that way does not lossen up much silage that don't end up in the bucket. If you dive in and raise the loader up, it will loosen a lot of silage that stays which lets air in and is bad. I put the silage in my wagon in layers (http://www.kryan.com/Pages/NewEquipment02.html), a kellyryan standard model wagon. on top of that, i load corn, distillers dry grain (DDG), pellets with rumensen, ground hay or what ever is in my ration. because the wagon I have does not mix, I do have to load the feed in layers. as the feed comes out, it is mixed very well. This type wagon cost much less and seems to be much less trouble than some of my neighbors mixer wagons, however it does require some manual labor leveling the feed. I call that exercise! mostly I feed into metal bunks. I also use some old tractor tires with the lower (on the ground) bead cut out) I leave the top bead on the tire. the ones off the front of fwa tractors are the best size for calves as they have less room to get their front feet in. Bunks are much perferable for calves, especially if you get muddy weather. Sometimes I will feed silage to cows out on clean grass right on the ground.

I weaned earlier than normal this year because of shortage of grazing and have calves from around 300 to 500 lbs.
I started my calves on corn silage 2 dayes after weaning them this year and had no problem getting them started eating it. By the third day, every calf was at the bunks by the time I got done unloading. they also had access to dry grass hay in bale rings. I lock the calves up with the water and bunks part of the day then turn them out on regrowth meadow grass for the rest of the day. after I get them going, I commonly feed them way over half their feed as corn silage and I have not noticed the big pot bellies people always tell me about. The feed guys all say you can't feed them that much silage, say it has too much water in it. seems to me they should just have to drink less water but the feed guys tell me I am all wet. It works fine for me. course I don't end up buying much feed from the feed dealers so guess it don't work so good for them!!