Major Considerations for Silage Harvesting

Silage harvesting is a high cost on Indian farms. Thus farmers must get the high quality that they and their dairy animals need. Here’s a fancy term dry matter digestibility, aka DMD, which indicates the feeding value of forage crop. Corn silage refers to the percentage of corn DM that an animal, such as a ruminant, can digest to aid its feed need.

DMD and DMD silage

The corn swards need to have high leaf content to make high DMD silage. Dry matter digestibility is also directly connected to harvest date. For example, research states that a crop harvested on June 2nd against a harvest date of May 20th resulted in a DMD decrease of as much as 5 percent.

Remember these noteworthy considerations while harvesting silage

Carefully read and noting these critical points can be the difference between high and poor quality silage.

• Weather will be the primary deciding aspect of silage harvesting. Still, during disturbed weather, where a bucket of opportunities arrives, farmers must avoid delaying harvest because delaying the first cut will give a massive decrease in quality and reduce the amounts of second cut outputs significantly.
• Corn sugars are the leading accounting factor for preserving the crop due to sugar being the food needed for fermentation bacteria. The farmers’ goal must be at least 3 percent. The cutting time must be around the early afternoon. Please note that the cutting conditions will have the most significant influence on sugar content in corn.
• Corn nitrates highly affect preservation by raising buffering capacity. A corn crop will, on average, use up to 2 units of nitrates every day for the first cut. Moreover, this is just a general protocol, and in any case, one must not delay the cutting date. Remember that wilting silage to approx. Greater than 28 percent will help decrease nitrates.
• Wilting is beneficial to silage preservation where sugars are in margins and/ or nitrates remain risen. The farmers’ aim must be to raise the dry crop matter between 25 percent and 30% with pit silage and from 30 to 35% with baled silage. However, be warned that over wilting or, in simple terms wilting more than necessary can cause problems when feeding out silage to the dairy animals, such as loss of heat or secondary fermentation.

Use a silage additive

Rules are here too. The benefit of a proven silage additive at ensiling is an essential part of saving as much of the silage quality in winter forage as possible. An excellent method to do this is to speed up preservation and retain more of the feed value within the pit, along with less waste or losses.

Observation: From a total of 19 trials, a proven silage additive has given the following results.

• One liter increased milk yield per cow per day and a 0.9% surge in milk protein.
• One percent decrease in dry matter falls.

Silage Agro is the number 1 Silage Supplier in Haryana. Their silage is of the highest quality and is available at the most affordable prices.

If they follow the path of good management, it is so far the farmers that they will be better off balancing their rations and improving their agricultural operations.