13 Video Views·Feb 24, 2024 #silage #fodder #cornsilage Use cornstalks out of your garden to make small batch silage and save on your feed bill. Silage production is entirely scalable - we’ll show you how!
#silage #fodder #cornsilage
The growing season has ended, and you’ve had a good crop of corn - and now it’s time to process the stalks and ready the plot for the next season’s use.
You have a few choices, including making autumn decorations, composting them, burning them, or - say it ain’t so - disposing of them in the garbage.
If you’ve got barnyard animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens, silage made from that corn can be used to augment your normal feeding routines for those animals.
You’ve likely seen silage being produced in rural areas where corn or maize is. Remember seeing large mounds that are covered with white sheeting and weighed down with tires? That’s silage being produced for the following season.
Producing silage utilizes what could be a waste product and makes it into feed that is highly palatable for animals, all the while reducing your feed bill. Silage can be made in very small batches as well - ideal for those of us home gardeners.
Think of silage as “pickled pasture.” Feedstock can come from crops such as corn, oats, wheat, alfalfa, legumes, maize, grasses, barley, sorghum, millet, and canola. Silage is made by chopping what remains after harvesting the main crop into small pieces and fermenting the matter in the absence of oxygen.
Initially, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) ferment the crop’s water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC) into acetic acid (vinegar is diluted acidic acid) and lactic acid. The formation of these acids lowers the pH of the silage, making it too acidic for other microbes to grow. Since the silage is covered and a ready supply of oxygen is excluded, fermentation sets in after about 2 days. As fermentation proceeds, the concentration of acetic acid diminishes, and lactic acid becomes dominant. Complete fermentation can occur as early as two weeks, with the result being silage that is characterized by a pleasant scent, with a slight fermented and sweet smell. Some have described it as somewhat like “bread and butter” pickles.
The optimum time to get corn silage to ferment well and to be able to pack tightly for the ensilage process is when the stalks are about 65% moisture or 35% dry matter. More on this later.
Here is how we make silage. We use a small chipper/shredder, machete for harvesting the corn stalks, 5-gallon plastic buckets, large plastic tarp, and 33-gallon plastic trash liners with pull ribbons.
We harvest all the corn stalks cut close to the ground and put them on a cart with the ends all pointing the same way. Once we have all the cornstalks in a pile near our chipper, we set up the chipper with the ejection chute exiting out over our tarp.
If you don’t have a medium-sized gas-powered chipper shredder like we do, a small electric vertical chipper can work too. Just adjust your feed rate to match the capability of your equipment. It’s possible to hand chop as our ancestors did and still get a good result. This is fine for small batches. You’ll need to ensure that the resulting pieces of cornstalk are 1” (2.5 cm) or less.
Grind or chop the corn over the tarp to ensure the silage stays clean.
Once you have finished the chopping process, separate out stringy leaves and larger pieces of matter. I discard those back into the garden plot and turn them under later.
If the resulting ensilage feels dry and doesn’t compact readily, add a bit of water. Don’t overdo it. It’s easier to add water than it is to remove it! Use a sprinkling can to add small amounts of water and then turn it with your pitchfork until moisture is dispersed evenly through the pile. The pile should not be soggy, but spongy - meaning you can grab a handful, compress it, and the silage will expand back out. A bit of experimentation from season to season will perfect your technique!
Now, line a five-gallon bucket with a 33-gallon plastic trash can liner and pack the silage into the container, compressing each layer as you go. Your goal is to expel as much air as you can. Continue these steps until the bucket is full. Be sure to pull up the sides of the trash liner as you go.
To give one final compaction, overfill the bucket a bit, and use a 5-gallon bucket, filled with water and sealed with a lid, to use as a weight to set on the silage-filled bucket and press out as much as possible and compress the silage. Then rapidly tie off the bag.
Do these steps with additional buckets and liners until you’ve used up your supply.
To ensure that air doesn’t get sucked back into the silage, we don’t put lids on the buckets - except for one. We stack the unlidded buckets on top of each other, with a lid only on the top bucket.
When spring arrives again, we’ll have feed supplements for our chickens that will encourage their natural foraging behavior AND reduce feather picking.
JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
hey dirt farmer J here from dirtfarmer
j.com it's been a great gardening season
you had a plot of corn whether it was a
small plot or a larger one but now you
have all these corn stocks what do you
do with it make silage that's right even
for small scale operations stay tuned
and I'll show you
how hey it's dir farmer J from dir
farmer j.com we had a great season this
year really enjoyed our crop of corn as
you can see dirt farmer Maggie there
saying hi out of the middle of our
little plot of corn uh but the season's
over we've given out all the corn that
we wanted to Fed a lot of it to our
chickens and now we have all of these
corn stocks what do you do make
Halloween or fall festival decorations
out of them well we did that for some
friends and family and that sort of
thing then what do you do compost it uh
burn it throw it away of course not what
you can do is what for a multiple
generations of small operation Farms
Family Farms and large Agra business
does to this day and that is to take
corn stalks uh um stalks from maze as
well as even grass fields chop it up at
the end of the season and then cover it
and smother out the oxygen in it so that
it ferments and what you get is silage
which is a highly
palatable uh livestock feed that can be
generally used in drier times of the
year Well to get started in that you
need some way to chop these up now what
we have is this chipper shredder it's an
old dog it's old steel All Steel uh run
by a um an engine uh that's made by a
company it's no longer in business tumza
uh but it still runs It's All Steel but
there's newer models out there there's
also electric ones and if you're doing
small scale you need some way to chop
chop this up real fine the finer the
chop uh the better things are going to
break down the sweeter it becomes uh and
when it ferments correctly what you're
going to get is something Akin uh the
smell of something that people have said
is like bread and butter pickles it's
very pleasant to the smell uh this is
one of those products if you got it
wrong and it started to mold or spoil
you'll smell it but if it was done right
it'll be a nice Aroma and the animals
like it as well so the first thing we're
going to do here is you can see here we
had to clear the field so we're chopped
down um all of the the stalks here load
them into this wagon just using a
machete and robed there was there
stacking the the corn as well but now
we've got these stalks here in the wagon
here and it's time to chop them up so
we'll go ahead and get those chopped up
and then we'll show you the next steps
of putting them into
containers that allow you to suffocate
them or uh squeeze or vacuum out the um
the oxygen and the air and in this case
we're not going to vacuum what we'll do
is press it out with pressure now one
last thing before we jump to that in
case you're thinking you're not familiar
with silage or you've never seen it well
look at a picture of this you've seen
those along the side of the roadway if
you've taken a cross country trip and
you've gone into rural areas where
there's large dairy or cattle finishing
operations and you can see where they
grind this up put it under these large
Hills cover it usually with a white
membrane and the weight it down with
Tire halves or other weights uh to keep
the membrane in place but also to keep
the weight on it to keep oxygen from
being suctioned back in around the edges
uh creating an anerobic environment is
key to creating very palatable
highquality silage but here's the cool
thing it's scalable you don't have to
have a football field size silage pile
to make it work you can do it in 5
gallon uh containers or trash barrels uh
where you've gotten the air out of them
usually by using trash liners or that
sort of thing but let's go ahead and
we're going to get grinding this up I'm
going to use my chipper shredder and uh
let's have some fun with that creating
the grind here we
go
and so here we see the complete
emptied area the plot
behind the machine that grounded
up
and the
result okay we brought in the cart of
the groundup Corn stocks and as you can
see um there aren't big flakes we kind
of took some time to get out some of the
big leaves and solid chunks that did not
get ground up well and I took
opportunity because this has been
sitting out we brought this and at night
here we are in the
daytime uh and I could feel the warmth
already building in the pile so I stuck
a thermometer in it overnight just to
see what we're registering
and uh that is
registering oh right at
110 it's hard to get it to focus but
there we go about
110° inside so it's already firing up
and starting to ferment so now what
we're going to do is start transferring
this over to these 5 gallon buckets uh
and I will line each bucket with a 13g
trash liner put in a layer compress it
and I'm actually going to use another
Homer bucket that's filled with water to
provide weight uh and uh to press that
down then add another layer of like
let's say 6 in at a time uh until the
whole top is full and then uh we'll see
what we can do to press more R out of it
but let's go ahead and start filling
that up here we go all right so the
first thing I'm going to do is actually
put on uh like
these um food processing gloves um
utility gloves and the reason is is this
is kind of sticky now this too bad this
video isn't scratch and sniff cuz you
would smell this kind of hopp is sweet
fermenting smell something like that uh
sometimes it smells kind of like the
finish on beer the aroma off of beer
something like that but uh it's already
starting to go uh into its fermentation
stage so with the heat that's being
generated now we're going to take this
because it's a little bit sticky with
all the starches and stuff so I'm going
to goe and start loading a couple
buckets and then we'll press them down
let's go for
it Bo on my side I can see steam coming
off of that quite a bit so um yeah it's
already generating its warmth and
starting to
ferment okay now what I'm going to do is
get a 5 gallon bucket of water set it
down inside there and CR it down even
more uh and then um continue backing
until we can seal it off all right so
here we have a partially filled bucket
of the silage compacted down by hand now
I'm going to take this 5 gallon bucket
of water and just put it inside of there
let it crush it down and press it
down and what we're doing is expelling
the gas that's in that out the edge of
the bag here
so I can feel it compressing and we'll
step and repeat until we have the bags
full and then we'll tie them off okay
now we have a 5 gallon bucket of water
really pressing on that second lift of
material and the trick is not to
overfill it we'll see if I've got it a
little too close to the top or not to be
able to pull the bag in around it so I'm
just using that as a weight and you can
see there's
vacuum now
now I'm going to go ahead and pull up
the bag a little bit see it there around
the edges it's sliding past the material
without
tearing I'm going to go ahead and close
the
top like that but that's not what I'm
counting on cuz that's too big of an air
hole there so I'm going to grab that and
twist
it and as I do I'm going to go ahead and
expel more as you can see a little bit
comes out the
twist I can hear it you
can't we're getting as much air out of
this as we can all right as you can see
it's really sucked down but I'll do that
one more time just
to get more air out of
it
and then let's go ahead and twist it
really
good put a cable tie around
it and cinch it down I actually have
done one of these before like this right
here so when I go to store these just to
keep the air out of them I'm not going
to put Lids except on the top one I'll
just stack these on top of each other
like that and continue to press to keep
the air up all right and we're going to
continue to do all that then we're done
the top one will get a lid uh just a
regular one of these snap Lids like this
and uh then anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks
we should be able to open this up now
what's really nice about this um it's
small batch it recovers things that you
most likely would have thrown out or
just gone to the compost pile it's
highly palatable for all sorts of
livestock uh and in my case only I'm
going to be feeding it to his
chickens um as a like a a bed throw kind
of like scratch to let them deal with as
it sweetens up uh and maybe it'll be a
mid winter late winter treat as well for
them cuz I'll let this continue to
ferment for several weeks uh
the silage itself will tell you whether
or not uh it is in good shape or not if
it has a nice sweet smell someone
described as bread and butter pickles
what I'm smelling right now is more like
I said brewers yeast or something like
that um then you know you've done it
right and it's fine if you get a sour
smell or there's mold on it then it just
goes in the compost pile all right so
we're going to lock those up I'm going
to finish up doing the whole tub and
we'll go from there when this is all
cured we'll post another episode that
shows you the results you'll be able to
see the link to that episode in the
description down below just check it out
and then we'll let you know how the
animals like it as well that's the real
test well as you can see this is a great
way to recover what otherwise could be
construed as a waste material or just
decoration for the fall but now you've
got a way to feed your animals ongoing
with something that is great is highly
palatable and you did it yourself you
know another thing that uh hobby Farmers
struggle with is creating a good
Dependable irrigation system for
moderate size plots like a small field
corn well check out this video where we
show you how to do one out of PVC pipe
and you can drill holes in different
places for different kind of crops and
there's just a few tips and techniques
you're really going to enjoy about how
to put together a system that will serve
you for a long time and while you're at
it check out this other video that
YouTube thinks is perfect for your
viewing taste we think you're going to
enjoy it as well hey until the next time
this is dir farmer J putting away some
feed for the Little
Critters
