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Fix Those Holes In Silage Now

"The minute a hole appears in the plastic covering your silage stock or bale deterioration starts," says Frank Mickan, Pasture and Fodder Conservation Specialist at DPI Ellinbank.

By Department of Primary Industries - 17th November 2005 - Back to News

The larger the hole, the drier the silage, and the warmer the weather, the greater and faster will be the losses.

As the silage breaks down, dry matter and quality is lost and allows more air to enter even further into the silage storage. All holes should be repaired as soon as they are noticed to minimise ongoing deterioration.

If cattle break into wrapped bales they tend to sample all bales by chewing one small hole into the plastic then they get stuck into it and leave large, deep holes. The smaller holes can be repaired successfully if attended to quickly. However the larger, deeper holes are rarely satisfactorily resealed and 10–60% of the bale may be wasted, even if sealed soon after the offenders leave. If possible consider feeding these bales out, but make sure that you restrict the animals’ allowances to allow for this extra feed.

In a pit/stack situation cattle can create a lot of damage by leaving hoof size holes in the plastic and stack which allows entry for huge amounts of air. These must be sealed as soon as possible after the animals are removed. Apart from huge silage losses due to air ingress, the hoof marks tend to funnel rain into the hoof imprints, further adding to decomposition of the stack.

Do not use grey duct tape to repair holes. It will generally come unstuck or fall off within a short time. There are now plastic sealing tapes manufactured specifically to seal holes in both the clingwrap plastic used on baled silage, and plastic sheets for stack silage.

Before applying the tape, make sure the area to be resealed is clean, dry, and cool. Allow the tape to shrink after cutting to length, before applying it to the holed area. If subsampling bales using a corer, it is preferable to stuff some green grass in to the cored hole to expel the air before resealing. If not you will generally have a ring of mould (100-150 mm diameter) around the core by feed out time.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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