Silage is a type of animal feed made from fermented fodder crops. You can make it in the ground in a pit or above the ground in a drum or specialised silage bag. This video is about making maize stover silage in a drum or bag.
Maize stovers are the stalks and leaves left behind after maize cobs have been harvested for either human or animal consumption. While stovers can be a source of roughage for your dairy animals, they are not a complete feed on their own. This is because dry stovers that have been left in the field are hard for dairy cows to digest and difficult to eat in general so they don’t get much nutrition from them. The good news is that stovers can be used to make silage.
The first step is collecting your maize stalks and leaves from the field after the main crop is harvested. This should be done immediately because that is when the stovers have the most moisture content. This is also the perfect time to make your silage but sometimes storage is a necessary step in between.
If you can’t make your silage straight away, store the material on a raised platform in the shade to prevent termites from attacking it. This will also prevent it from getting wet or drying out under the sun. You can build a storage shed from local materials such as bamboo. Make sure it is positioned away from grazing animals.
When ready to make silage, you need to chop the material into smaller pieces, about 24cm long. A fodder chopper can speed up this process. The next step is to prepare your other ingredients, mixing molasses, salt and water together.
For one drum of silage, mix together 15 litres of water, 3 litres of molasses and quarter of a kilogram of salt. The water is for moisture, the salt is for taste and sugar from the molasses kickstarts the fermentation process.
Add a layer of chopped stover to your drum or bag. Compress it down to remove as much air as possible – use your body weight if you need to, but make sure you don’t contaminate the material with soil. Next add a layer of your molasses mixture. Keep up this layering and compressing process, adding the molasses mixture each time, until your drum or bag are full. Now cover your drum or bag with plastic and put something heavy on top, like soil, to stop air getting in and spoiling the silage.
Store your silage drums or bags in a safe place. This is particularly important for bags because termites can eat their way through the plastic.
Your silage will be ready to use in six weeks. Only open the drum or bag when you are ready to feed the silage to your animals. Use it every day until it is finished, being careful to cover it with plastic each time your open it.
In summary, while making maize stover silage takes time and effort, it is an excellent way to reduce feeding costs by using a waste product that you might otherwise burn or throw away. For more information, see fact sheets F01A and F10.