Bag silage, any experience ?

[BobbyB]

I never thought of this, but saw it mentioned in a thread here and looked into it.

Seems simple enough. Growing some sudan or corn or something to make silage would be easy enough, if it rains a little. I dont mind cutting it by hand, but I balk at chopping it by hand.

I was thinking about putting it through a mulcher or one of those smaller limb grinder/choppers and then bagging it.

But, open to suggestions or would like to hear from any that has done it in any way.

[sammyd]

We have made both grass silage and corn silage.
The grass stuff we just raked up after mowing the lawn. We let it get a bit taller than normal before mowing. I wanted to just pack it into 5 gallon buckets with lids but the wife decided to use smaller trash bags to line the buckets. We let the clippings sit on the lawn overnight and raked them up the next day. Raked them up and packed them into the lined buckets. Twisted the bag shut and taped it closed and put the lid on.
It worked OK but the grass was a bit dry. We tried our experiment late in the year and I should have put the stuff up the same day. Earlier in the year the overnight wait might have been OK.

For corn silage we used to put up the leftovers from the garden with a chipper/shredder and that worked OK but was a pain to work with, it was slow and all the stuff was blown down near the ground so we were always stooping over. I bought a chopper body and the last time we did 1/8 acre of corn just for silage it went pretty quick.
Once the corn is chopped I pack it into old feed bags, pack pound stomp to get as much in as I can. Then I put the full bag into a trash bag and suck the air out with an old vacuum cleaner. I use the feed bags because they are a bit tougher than the trash bags and won't puncture but they aren't air tight so they go inside trash bags. Twist the bag and tape shut. This takes pretty much all the air out and that promotes the proper fermentation, exposure to air will wreck silage.

You could use 55 gallon drums with reusable lids if you have them and build some sort of lever with a packer attached. I thought about it but up here it gets pretty cold and moist silage may freeze in the barrel and then I wouldn't be able to feed it.
Storage is critical we lost a lot of the corn silage to mice and rates who dug through the plastic bags. In the future I will probably store them up on a hay wagon to try to get away from that.

Here is the rig...you can see the old chipper/shredder on the left. We aim the chopper into a plastic pallet with sides then fork out of there.
http://sefsufficient.com/drill/chopper1.JPG

[willielisa]

I've been thinking of this too - I hear it can go terribly wrong. How would I know if I was feeding something good or bad since I haven't ever seen 'good' silage? Any tips?

[Big Dave]

Won't sudan or Johnson grass harm your livestock?

[BobbyB]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

Won't sudan or Johnson grass harm your livestock?

dont know why. Unless it was cut under stress and the prussic (spelling) acid was high. Ive seen lots of silage made out of sorghum sudan hybrids

[sammyd]

sudan grass must be harvested at the proper time or it can cause problems. As a kid I chopped a lot of it for green feed but we never ensiled it.

The best tip for making silage is to remove as much air as possible and prevent the silage from being exposed to air while it is fermenting. Making it in small quantities is good for small amounts of livestock because once you open the bag it will begin to spoil, quicker in warmer weather. You can usually tell bad silage if it has mold.

[coolrunnin]

We cut sudan for green chop as well as ensiled.

Just dont cut it after frost.

[BobbyB]

Like I said, I have seen a lot of sorghum sudan hybrids chopped for silage. The 2 feed lots I haul grain to have their silage piled in mountains covered with sheet plastic, or it was when it was first piled. They use a rubber tired loader to scoop it up and haul it to the mixers.

When I worked for the prison system here ( I was a supervisor and not wearing white ), they had long pits it was dumped in and rolled with a tractor or a dozer. ( I was told numerous times that when they had 100's of inmates stomping it in with their feet, the packing was tighter and the silage much better )

I am seriously thinking about building 2 wooden walls and putting my silage between them and rolling it with my tractor. I can cover it with plastic when finished.

But again, all my silage plans depend on getting some rain. So who knows?