For many decades, silage has been and remains one of the most useful and valuable types of green feed for animals and birds. He can boast not only high calorie content, but also a large number of vitamins, trace elements. Therefore, its regular use provides strong immunity and good mass gain. So every person whose activities are related to livestock and poultry farming should know about silage harvesting technology.
What is a silo?
First you need to figure out what constitutes a silo. These are specially preserved green plants. During canning, not only the lactic acid contained in the stems and leaves of some of them is used, but also special chemicals that accelerate the fermentation process.
Harvesting takes relatively little time and does not depend on weather conditions, unlike, for example, hay and haylage. In this case, the silo can be stored for many months and even several years. If storage technology is not compromised, then its nutrients will not be lost. The specific composition depends on what kind of greens were used for silage.
The selection of suitable raw materials should be approached very seriously and responsibly. It is necessary not only to choose the right plants, but also to accurately guess with time and choose the appropriate proportion. Only in this case it will be possible to obtain high-quality feed that provides farm animals and birds with all the necessary substances and calories.
Silage classification of plants
Specialists involved in the development of silage harvesting technology have long divided most plants into three categories according to the degree of silage. They are called simply and no wonder: easy-, hard- and non-silageous. Therefore, the choice of suitable raw materials should be very careful not to make mistakes that lead to damage to valuable raw materials. We give specific examples.
For example, lightly growing crops include corn, grasses, bean grasses, sunflowers, cabbage leaves, pumpkin, potatoes and watermelon. They are suitable for the preparation of feed - both in mixed form and individually. The green mass itself releases the necessary substances that trigger a complex process of silage.
It is customary to classify alfalfa, quinoa, clover and clover as difficult to build. By themselves, they secrete a small amount of lactic acid, so the process, if it does, is extremely slow. Therefore, experts recommend mixing these cultures with light-silting in equal proportions.
Finally, non-silageous. These are nettles, tops of tomatoes, potatoes and other nightshade, whip zucchini, pumpkin, watermelon, cucumbers and melons. This green does not produce lactic acid at all, which is why the silage process does not start at all. However, you should not give up - under certain conditions, it is possible to manufacture silage from these crops. The easiest way is to mix greens with lightly salted. True, the proportion here will be already 1: 3. In addition, easily saccharified products, such as molasses, ground cereals and boiled potatoes, can be added to greens.
When does harvesting start?
This is a pretty tricky question. The fact is that although the technology for harvesting silage from corn does not differ from sunflower, potato or watermelon silage, the time for harvesting can vary significantly. After all, different plants have a different vegetation period. In some, nutrients peak in June, and in others in August. In addition, one and the same plant silos well at one time and very poorly at another.
Take clover for example. If you collect it during the formation of buds, then silage is extremely slow - because of which it is referred to as difficult to silage. But if you wait a few weeks and mow it while blooming, the process will go by itself, without mixing with other cultures. The situation is the same with perennial cereal grasses that were grown using a large number of nitrogen fertilizers. In the early stages of vegetation, they are very poorly silted. But when earing, the process starts independently and quite easily. Also, the problem can be solved if the green mass is dried before silage. With a decrease in humidity to 60-65 percent, the process is more active.
Procurement Calendar
Therefore, you need to have at hand a kind of calendar in which the suitable deadlines for harvesting green crops are shortly and clearly laid out. Let's talk briefly about the most commonly used plants.
- Sunflower - in the early stages of flowering.
- Sorghum and corn - upon reaching waxy or milky-wax ripeness of grains. But in regions with a harsh climate, where they cannot reach this phase, earlier silage is possible.
- Lupine - with the appearance of shiny beans.
- Soybeans - when drilling beans located in the lower part of the plant.
- Winter rye - in the early days of heading.
Knowing the optimal silage time that is suitable for each plant, you can easily achieve excellent results.
Normalize humidity
The optimal silo humidity is in the range of 70-75 percent. In this case, the reaction is most active, and mass loss due to a decrease in the proportion of juice is sharply reduced. How to achieve the desired indicator?
For example, consider the harvesting of one of the most promising, but at the same time rather problematic crops - corn. As mentioned above, it is harvested during milk ripeness - at this time, silage is especially good. Alas, its humidity ranges from 82 to 87 percent - much more than required. Because of this, the quality of the finished silo is significantly reduced. And together with the resulting juice, up to 30 percent of the total mass is lost!
To solve the problem, experts recommend using a special technology for harvesting corn silage. High-moisture raw materials are carefully crushed using special equipment, after which they are mixed with also crushed dry components. This may be straw cutting, as well as legumes and grain crops having low humidity. For example, if the moisture content of the corn mass is 85 percent, then the proportion of chopped straw should be 15-20 percent. And at a humidity of 80 percent, this figure drops to 10-12. Thanks to this, the process of silage is actively ongoing, and not only corn is involved, but also dry straw. And the moisture indicator of the silo corresponds to the optimum - about 70-75 percent.
Optimum process temperature
The technology of harvesting silage from sunflower, corn and any other crop is based on the work of sour-milk bacteria. It is thanks to them that greens turn into high-calorie, stored for a long time feed.
In general, they successfully develop in a rather large temperature range - from 5 to 50 degrees Celsius. But the most favorable indicator is 25-35 degrees.
However, today there are two types of silage - cold and hot. The first is characterized by a silage temperature at the moment of fermentation at about 30 degrees. And the second - from 50 and above. However, hot silage has a serious drawback - mass loss can reach 40 percent! Of course, this is unacceptable. Therefore, it is cold siloing that is most popular today.
To reduce the fermentation temperature, the silo laying process must be carried out correctly. Firstly, the entire procedure should not take more than three to four days. Secondly, the plant mass must be carefully ground and compacted. Finally, thirdly, during storage of the silo it is necessary to ensure complete isolation from the surrounding air. Under these conditions, silage takes place at the optimum temperature.
Where to silage raw materials?
For many years, silage harvesting technology in trenches has been used. On Soviet collective farms, tractors and excavators manufactured special silo pits with a volume of hundreds and thousands of cubic meters. A silo was laid in them, after which it was sprinkled with earth. Thanks to this, good tightness was ensured at a low expenditure of time and effort. Indeed, the difference in the technology of harvesting silage and haylage, as already found out earlier, lies precisely in the absence of access of air from outside, while it is very important to ensure good ventilation when harvesting haylage.
In addition, special silos were used. This is a more time-consuming procedure, and the volume of the towers is usually much inferior to the trenches.
Well, modern silage harvesting technologies provide another option - special plastic bags or sleeves. They have a huge volume - several hundred cubic meters. The advantage is fast deployment on the ground.
Procedure
The procedure itself is quite simple. The green mass is carefully crushed and laid in a trench or sleeve. In this case, it is desirable to observe the correct sequence. When using plants belonging to different groups in terms of silage speed, you need to alternate them - the more the number of layers, the better the process will go.
The same can be said about dry supplements - they must be well mixed with a wet mass. Otherwise, they will remain dry, and the silo will turn out to be heterogeneous - too wet in one part and dry in the other.
Immediately after installation, the silo must be sealed to start the process.
Feeding animals
In most plants, the silage process takes from 15 to 20 days. In legumes, it increases to 45-60 days. After this period, the finished silo can be used to feed animals and birds. If you do not violate the tightness of the sleeve or trench, the silo can be stored for several years.
It is very important not to extract food with a margin - the whole mass should be eaten during the day. Otherwise, its nutritional value is significantly reduced due to the launch of irreversible chemical processes.
Conclusion
On this our article comes to an end. Now you know much more about silage harvesting technology. And also dealt with the characteristics of various plants and methods of silage.