Look to learn from your silo face

Why bother examining your clamp?

Silage is fed for six months of the year or more, so its quality and quantity has a massive impact on your financial health.

Volac five point checklist for your clamp

1. How does the clamp look?

Begin by making an assessment of how tidy the clamp is. And be honest with yourself. Is the face untidy and allowing air to get in? If so, correcting an untidy face is an easy fix. Doing it now can make a big difference to reducing air ingress and surface wastage this year. 

If waste is present deeper in the clamp, this could be a sign of a poor fermentation. That means the way you make silage needs improving. Better clamp consolidation, correct use of a proven additive and improvements in clamp sealing are needed to protect production and profits. Inadequate consolidation is a big problem nowadays, because trailers arrive at clamps in rapid succession, leaving little time to properly compact and roll the previous load. If darker, black layers are visible in the silage this can be a sign that excess nitrogen was present in the grass when cut. After applying nitrogen allow a long enough window before cutting.

2. Temperature – how cool is it?

Another good indicator of the quality of the silage’s compaction is its temperature. It needs to stay cool. Heating up is a sign of aerobic spoilage, which is caused when yeasts and moulds feed on the silage in the presence of air. This action effectively ‘burns up’ its nutrients. Unfortunately, problems with heating in the clamp won’t go away when the silage is exposed to more air at feed-out. You may need to consider an additive to reduce heating in the feed trough. To prevent heating next season, better clamp consolidation and sealing is vital.

3. Smell – what does the silage smell like?

Another simple check is how the silage smells. Is it sweet or unpleasant? If unpleasant it could be due to poor fermentation caused by undesirable micro-organisms. As with aerobic spoilage (heating), some feed value will have been lost. Even if you’ve done all the other ensiling steps well, if the fermentation hasn’t been effective, your other efforts may have been undermined. Next season, take as many steps as possible to ensure only ‘good bacteria’ that produce the right type of fermentation dominate the clamp.

4. Feel – how does it feel?

Next check the silage texture. Slimy silage can be a sign of excess nitrogen present in the grass at harvest and might also be due to low sugars and a poor fermentation allowing undesirable microbes to take hold. These undesirable microbes have effectively started to break down what’s in the clamp. As well as checking whether silage is slimy, check if it is leafier or more fibrous than you expected. If excessively fibrous this suggests the grass was cut too late and contains excess stem material – for example if cutting was delayed in pursuit of extra bulk! The optimum cutting time for both yield and quality is just before grass starts heading. After heading digestibility falls by about 0.5% a day.

5. Moisture – how wet or dry is the silage?

Finally, assess your silage moisture content. If wetter or drier than expected, it may be a sign that your wilting technique needs re-checking. Wilting to 28-32% dry matter – and doing it rapidly – is the optimum for both minimising in-field losses and minimising effluent risk in the yard. If the silage is wetter than the grass that was originally ensilaged this can be yet another sign that fermentation was slow and inefficient. That’s because a by-product of a slow fermentation is water. Ensiling with  proven additive Ecosyl reduces this risk.

Next steps to consistently better silage...

Rather than relying on memory when making these assessments take some notes of good and bad points and keep them safe. Better still, take phone photos as a visual reminder. By doing this you can prepare a simple action plan – such as re-assessing cutting dates, clamp consolidation and sealing methods plus ordering proven additive Ecosyl.

Volac Ecosyl additives are distributed in NI by John Thompson & Son Ltd tel; (028) 9035 1321. Browse www.cuttoclamp.com for further information or contact Volac NI silage specialist Ken Stroud tel; 07713 197084