Corn Silage: Make It Good Quality With These Tips

Feeding them good-quality silage is the best method to keep your cows healthy and yield more milk. This fodder comes in many flavors, of which corn silage is the most preferred. However, to make it of better quality, you need to follow specific tips and a procedure.

Get tools ready before harvesting: A crucial thing about making better quality corn silage or any flavored silage is to get your equipment ready before the estimated chopping date. It includes tasks such as sharpening knives. In addition, it is essential for a timely harvest with the right moisture content.

Harvest time: Proper fermentation is key to making good quality corn silage. To achieve this, you must promote harvest at the right moisture content for good fermentation and reduce storage losses. Below is the correct moisture content as per your storage type.

• For bunkers, it is 30-35% DM (65-70% moisture).
• For upright bags and silos, it is 35-40% DM (60-65% moisture).

Correct chop length: Just like the moisture, the height at which your crop is chopped can also make or break the quality of your feed. You need to finely chop the corn for good packing to remove oxygen and set up a suitable fermentation procedure quickly. The thumb rule is that the chop length should be long enough for cud chewing. The proper chopping length is written below for your reference.

• Alfalfa haylage or silage should be cut at 3/16 inches.
• Unprocessed corn silage should be cut at ⅜ to ½ inches.
• Processed (Kernel processor) corn silage should be cut at ¾ inches.

Adjusting silage choppers with on-line kernel processors: If your cutter contains a kernel processor, the ideal moisture content of the silage you harvest should be 62-65% (35-38% DM). It enables capturing additional starch accumulation in the corn kernels. Here are a few more points you should remember.

• You should pulverize most of the corn kernels to a similar size.
• To optimize starch digestion and provide enough adequate fiber, experts recommend cutting at 0.75 inches with a starting roller clearance of 0.12 inches.

Keep knives sharp and adjusted adequately throughout the filling process: Always remember that sharp knives stop silage from shredding. The outcome is a more uniformly cut crop, which allows maximum forage compaction, suitable fermentation, and enough particle size to prevent health issues in the cow.

Rapidly fill silos: To help prevent air from entering and ruining the silage, you should rapidly fill the silos within a week. It also prevents dark brown or black bands in it. Here’s a tip to fill bunkers.

• You should fill them from the back to the front, adding forage in chunks and never from the bottom to the top in layers.

Packing

• Another rule of thumb is to tightly pack your silage to make it ferment more quickly and contain less yeast and mold.
• It also helps decrease the size of oxygen packets, which outcomes in fermentation end products, which your cow can use better to yield milk.

Cover silos immediately after filling: You need to cover bunkers and silos with six mil plastic tarps and tires touching each other after filling. You should also line up the sides of the bunkers with plastic. Finally, you should level upright silos and cap them with silo caps.

• You should let silage ferment for 3-4 weeks before feeding.

The above steps will only give you good-quality Corn Silage. However, for maximum benefits, you need excellent quality silage. Therefore, I recommend Silage Agro Private Limited. In my opinion, it is the best Silage Manufacturer in India.

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.